13,754km...

Arriving in Buenos Aires was not quite what we expected, having had scorching weather and sunshine for the last few weeks we were greeted with high humidity and rain (albeit warm!). We ate a lot of empanadas in our first couple of days in the city - essential to try as many as possible to find out which were our favourites - and wandered around the city. We're saving most of the sightseeing for the few days we have back in BA in a couple of weeks. 

Having spent a couple of days acclimatising to being in an all together very different part of the world, we met up with our group for our two week trip to Patagonia on Monday. That night we went out for our first steak and red wine dinner - where Andy had 'the best steak he's ever had'... For anyone that has been to Argentina I'm sure you'll agree that he'll almost certainly be saying that a lot! The guy from GAP who we were out with knew our part of the world very well, although he is Argentinian and grew up in Buenos Aires, he lived in Surbiton for a couple of months - you really couldn't make it up. 

We travelled down to El Calafete on Tuesday morning, and the first glimpse of Patagonia from the plane window was incredible, it is like New Zealand but on an entirely different scale, the Andes are immense, and the scenery is stunning. Our first stop was a three hour drive away in El Chalten, a tiny town which is known for hiking, a base to visit Fitz Roy Mountain.  Yesterday was our first opportunity to test out the hiking boots that we had the best of intentions of wearing in while still at home. This was certainly a decent first outing - we hiked around 20km up to Laguna de los Tres.  Full disclosure - the last half an hour of the hike would have involved hands and knees scrambling to get to the viewpoint, we went about halfway up and then thought better of it, ankles breaking on day 3 when we have so much more to do did not seem like the best idea. We're saving the scrambling for Torres del Paine in a few days.  We walked back via an amazing viewpoint of one of the glaciers that just seems to ooze out from a crack in the mountain, the scale of everything is unbelievable, jaw dropping scenery at every turn.  

My pedometer tracked us as having walked around 35000 steps yesterday, and climbing the equivalent of 330 flights of stairs... It has never known numbers like it! 

Things we learned on our first trek day were:

1) Andy makes a rubbish donkey/packhorse

2) It snows in Patagonia even in the summer

3) A local guides idea of 15 minutes and ours are slightly different (45 minutes later still walking...)

4) Dulce de Leche is delicious!

Last night was a well earned trip to the local microbrewery, where they make beer from the glacier melt water in the mountains.  Andy was a big fan, and by the end of it had talked himself into a tour of the room where they make the beer...

Andy has decided he's anti shaving... We are 5 days in and the beard is growing in well... I am undecided, not sure how long it it going to be allowed to stay!

We're back off to El Calafate today, and off to visit the Perito Moreno glacier tomorrow... More soon :)