South American travels

Typically enough we missd the one bus that goes to Mendoza (back into Argentina) as it left at 8am this morning, consiering we only saw our beds at around 5am this morning, that was never going to happen and coupled with the fact that we didnt know that there was only one bus out of the country it was over for us.

Last night was amusing, we met up with Oscar, taking along the 2 boys we met in the hostel. One is Matt, a documetary maker rom LA/NYC who is a very cool laidback kinda guy, he hing out with us in the pouring rain yesterday without complaint and was also on the bus with us when it crashed. The other is Dan who arrived yesterday, a Pom with a very dry amusing sense of humour but alot more forward than most of the English boys i know. Very amusing... Anyway we started of at the coffe place we had originally met Oscar at after playing canaster and driking alot of cheap Chilean red wine, very very sweet - it so was not Cab Sauv or Merlot as stated on the bottles but we soldiered on. We then went down the road to a very bohemian vegetarian (i am asuming as we got disgusting soy on our pizza) restaurant and had some mulled wine and snacks then to a little bar where there was some very cool Chilean live music and we had our first Pisco Sours which were great, then onto Huevo, translation:EGG, which is the "happening" place here in Valparaiso, it has 4 levels all playing different music (some live bands). Danced to some Regaton and then rock n Rolled on the floor below with Dan - bizaar!

Hopefully off tomorrow, taking the 8am bus to Mendoza - there is a chance of snow in the Andes which means the bus will not leave which will really really annoy me, i am keen to get a move on now and get back to the cheaper Argentina...es muy importante as am broke already!

Quick update on adventures so far...
We made it to chile without too much fuss, they have the friendliest border guards in the world, annelie and i were "beautiful chicas´s" etc etc. We got to Pucon at aroud 8:30 and organised our volcano ascent for the following day.It was all quite hectic as the currency obvioulsy changed and we went from paying 20 pesos per night per room to 6000 chilean pesos, all a bit stressful..

Chile is very different to Argentina, weird as you could tell the difference as you crossed the border, i seems more mysterious and brooding almost. The skies are more of a mauve colour as opposed to the bright blues of argentina and the mountains are in dark clusters around the place covered in trees (aregentinian andes were bare of and trees or much vegetation). The people are also not as open and chatty as the argentinians which is no a bad thing, just different.

You gotta love this place, the next morning we were up early and driven to the Villarica i think it´s call(the volcano), we got crampons on our feet and ice picks (no teaching us how to use them or anything funny)and off we went. the weather was not great being pretty chilly and cloudy so the snow had turned to icem hence the crampons from word go. It was bloody hard work and after 3 hours of climbing we had to turn back as the the clouds had decended over the top of the volcano - it was a pity but it was still a great experience and the views were amazing. Pics to appear on the site shortly - you can see how Paris and Nocole do volcanos.

We are now in Valparaiso, arrived yesterday and have had an accident each day. yesterday in the taxi from the bus to the hostel and then today on the bus back into valparaiso. Its pelting down cats and dogs and our bus crashed into a car on the highway, these things always happen to us! anyway we are fine but had to wait for another bus to come pick us up.

Off again tomorrow to get back into Argentina which im lookin forward to as this place is bloody expensive. I do have to say however that Valparaiso is growing on me, it was a little scary at first as it felt very foreign. Everywhere else we have been has had a western feel about it whereas this place is very dilapidated and does not have many tourists (if any)but it has alot of charm, all the houses are painted different colours (not unlike La boca in BA) and go on as far as the eye can see. Very interesting architecturally too...we are off to dinner tonight with an interesting guy from the south of spain who has moved here named Oscar (met him in a coffee shop yesterday) - very liberal left wing arty tye of guy with some very interestig views on the world. He first had to go to hospital today for a bruised or broken rib, seems lke him and his friend who came here with him dont get along so well anymore.

Nothing really changed in the last couple days in Barriloche, we had some fantastic steak, went riding to in the mountains and to one of the lakes -so beautiful but bloody freezing. The saddles were not really saddles actually, they were not much of anything and there were no covers for the stirrup buckles so Annelie and i both have lovely bruises on our thighs!

We went for a greeat steak as i said wehere the waiter (admitedly gorgeous) pinched my butt while taking a photo with us and then told me to meet him t Roxy´s (local club) later, we did actually end up going there but i didnt see him. The usual get home at 5am thing and then took a hungover cable car up Cerro Campanario i think its called - the most spectacular views of lakes and mountains i have ever seen .- i have photo´s but the PC´s here are so slow there is no way i can get them on my site just yet, i have the cd´s with loads of pics but no way of getting them to you.Anyway, we then went to the bus station for our bus ride to St MArtin de los Andes (where i am now) only to find out we had missed it and had to wait 3 hours for the next one - great, so we mised the view of the 7 Lakes as we travelled at night..oh well.

Went for a hike yesterday and in true Paris and Nicole fashion we took a wrong turn and ended up straded on some cliffs with the sun about to set. The adrenaline set in and we were rick climbing and sliding down the mountain at a 90 degree angle. T o no avail, we eventually found these 2 little boys in the mountains (not sure what they were doing there but no matter) and paid them to get us the truck off the bloody mountain. They were seriously like little mountain goats jumping off little cliffs and running down the mountain at angles we didnt think possible - we did it nonetheless and paid them 5 pesos (well spent) at the bottom after they had to protect us from the aggressive dogs in the shanty town we ended up in - all quite adventurous and fun (once we were down that is)

Must fly, have a bus to Chile to catch as we are going to attemp to climb a volcano on tuesday.

Hey everyone

hope you are all well, me, i have been suffering since i left Buenos Aires 5 or 6 days ago. Defo overdid it there but had such a good time. Mendoza was much of the same, the first hostel we stayed in was pretty boring so we left after 2 days and went to another one, bad bad move! There were a bunch of Quebecans (so the French variety of Canada - i made the mistake of calling them firstly Americans which did not go down well, so i then attempted calling them French which was even worse...apparently Quebecan is the correct term not to be confused with anything else.) Anyway, long story short, we ended up being cooked for by them they plied us with massive amounts of the local wine and being a sunday with not many clubs open we asked one of the hostel workers where we should go. Well the place we ended up in on the outskirts of Mendoza was one of the most "interesting" places i have been. Big lesbian cops at the front and a 6"4 platinum blonde haired man with massive boobs to rival even Jordan, and the most pocker marked face i have seen - basically, pretty scary! We had some petrol like drinks there and i had to protect the boys from all the scary gay men (being a gay club - knowing this before would have helped), i didnt realy mind as my charge was a lovely boy called Laurence (with a French accent) who looked exactly like Collin Farrel (even better looking in fact)- so i was more than happy to oblige....naughty! Anyway, we got little tipsy and as a reslut went to bed a 6am and couldnt make it to the day wine tour we were supposed to go on. We were leaving on Monday night for Bariloche and decided that we could not be in the winbelands of Argentina and not go to a wine farm, so being the troopers we are we booked another trip for 2pm and off we went, hangovers and all....got the bus to drop us off at the bus station Monday evening after trying and buying 4 bottles of wine, (not that we needed to add to the whole luggage situation) and we somehow managed to get all our crap(and there is alot of it, dont know how but we seem to have a "girl explosion" wherever we go! Thankfully got on the bus for a 20 hour bus trip which was thouroughly enjoyed as i had the best nights sleep over 4 hours for the first time on this trip. Now in Barriloche, first night last night and in true P and N fashion we caused a fight in the club we went to, as the men were trying to get us to kiss and basically manhandling us, some Ausies and Americans got involoved and some guys were kicked out the club - we seem to cause chaos whereever we are, i am hoping when we are in the middle of nowhere we will manage to keep everything calm and not cause anymore fights and - that remains to be seen. havent showered in 2 days and had 3 hours sleep last night so i must go but there will be some more pics on the Truprint sight soon......send me news..xxxx

Hey hey
Just back from a great day in the area of BA called La Boca- its the 'downtown area' of the city but the most unbelievably exciting place, the streets are brightly coloured = each house is painted lots of bright colours and there is alot of tangoing going on in the streets, this is the area where tango first originated, it was more of a poor mans dance - the dance that the sailors and prostitutes did when trying to woo each other, when the yellow fever epidemic broke out half the people moved into the more posh areas of Recoletta and Palermo where they started Tango too and thats where it grew from. We had a walk around the streets went into the Boca Juniors stadium (they were the team we watched play on sunday and won the league)- for those of you who dont know - La boca is Maradonna's team - unfortunatley we leave on thursday and wont be able to make the next match on sunday at the home ground where Marradonna will be - its great, right in the middle of the seats there is a big yellow sofa where he sits and 60 thousand people chant his name - it would beunbeliavable to see that but alas we need to get the truck out of this fantastic city - too much carnage going on and the budget does not exist any more - i am really looking forward to getting to the Andes and chilling the truck out - this place is goddamn crazy. i must say though, for any interested in coming here - DO - it is such a fantastically vibrant happy and friendly place, it is a bit dilapidated in parts but this only seems to add to its charm - it has so many different areas to explore - from the posh Recoletta with beatifil parks to the vibrant but poor La Boca, the streets are massive the building are fantastic and they have statues of any foreign famous person who ever visited BA in its history - seriously you have never seen such massive and impressive staues in your life, from Ghandi to Columbus. The clubs are great the food is great the wine is great and they are a very welcoming lot. We have made some great friends which we will be sad to part from but no doubt we will be meeting many more along the next 2 months.....i now have added Swedish, French, Brazilian, Australian and more english to the friendship list. Before i go i'll give you a brief update on what we did last night, yesterday was more of the same - walking around getting lost and getting home exhausted - great fun and even managed to get a gallery in there too. We went o ut to dinner with a friend of Jacks's friend in london = who then bumped into his old school mate who is Brazialian and very cute. His father is the Bob Dillan of Brazil apparently and has over 300 recorded songs and his uncle lives in Peru dealing with and exporting medicinal herbal plants...lets not read into that one too much!! we will hopefully be getting in touch with him when we get to Peru - contacts are always great to have ...hmmmm Off finally for some steak and tango this evening before heading off to El Tigre with the boys (we have alot of guy friends which is great - not so many girl friends yet - must be jealous as we keep taking the cute boys on adventures with us!)for a bit of a picnic by the river and chill out session which should be great before leaving muchos early on Thursday morning to the winelands of Mendoza
chat later
and please write to guys - i miss you

Well we have had some interesting times since i last wrote....Friday we decided to have a walk around and see some of the sights etc, basically, to cut a very long story short we got it wrong from the time we walked out of the hostel...we walked out turned left and followed the map up to where we thought Plaza de Mayo was and then proceeded to get a bit lost but eventually found Recolleta where we went and saw Evita Perons Grave/tomb in the massive (and impressive)cemetary - my feet were ripped to shreds and i stopped to put some plasters on and then proceeded to wonder around the cemetary trying to find Evitas one - walked a full circle only to notice my bloody Prada handbag still on the bench i had left in on 15 minutes earlier - thank god i had not realised it was gone until then as i think i would have died on the spot from a heart attack - there was our hole lives in cluding all mopney and cards as well as phones and keys for the hostel. Phew! Anyway we then somehow found our way to the shopping steets and then tried to get home, we took a tube to where we thought the hostel was only to eventually find out that we had been reading the map upside down the entire day - this would explain the fact that every time we turned down a street it seemed to be the wrong way! and we ended up not on the map any more and had to take a cab home - all the spots we had gone to during the day are in fact only a few minutes walk away from where we are staying, we managed to take a day to do it - at least we saw most of Buenos Aires!!! We bring out the Blondes in each other me thinks. So, friday night we went to a bar recommended by a friend of Annelis friend and then on to a very posh club called RUMI in Palermo - we mentioned the guy who owns the places name and were let inside with no problmes, had a bit of sushi at 12 at night - thats around the time they stop serving food and it turns into a club - played great music - starting off with a bit of Hotel Costes 'I like London in the Rain' ironically enough... we made few boy friends there - very cute Rugby player, only 22 though! They were very sweet boys, but then got a l;ittle aggressive and demnading so we eventually ran away from them at around 5am and cabbed home. Saturday was spent doing some more walking around and with our new Aussie mate Mike, who is a big lad and thus the comments are kept to a minimum while walking around the town. saturday night was 'SOUTHFEST' night - massive party with Ladytron and Deep Dish amounst others, it was at the Docs not very far from here, open air and 20,000 people!! Bloody huge! Great time getting home at around 6am this time, not before getting an Argentinian leech attached to us quite early on in the evening and refused to leave us alone - pretty annoying but did a lot of jumping around and making friends with all the amazingly cooked people there! Exhausted and needless to say no sleep - its pretty danm noisy in this hostel with people only getting in around 6 to 9am and then the others wake up at about that time so we basicallay just got up, and got ready to go to our first ever live Football match. Quite a biggy as it turns out, BOCA vs Independiente - basically the final of the Argentinian league - over 100k people there - the most incredible atmosphere i have ever been in - these people take their football extremely seriously! We were Boca supporters but sitting with the Indi supporters, we needed to pretend we were supporting them... anyway when Boca won Mike decided to take a photo of them which the others did not think was cool - next thing Annelie was flying forward and i was flying to the right into the people in front of me - yup - do not take a picture of the winning team if you are sitting with the losers! Shots and tear gas and everything - fantastic!!!!!! anyway - i am hogging the PC so must fly - dont worry photo's are to follow soon!!

Love you allxxx

We have Arrived! So far so good, the argentianian people are very friendly, maybe a little too much when we are walking around outside! We do stick out like sore thumbs the 2 of us Blondies...we just ventured out yesterday evening to find that the men could not stop staring at us and making comments but i didnt get the uncomfortable feeling i got when i was in Italy - quite flattering realy - we really are a popular couple! im sure the novelty will wear off soon but we will milk it while we can I am sure! We need to find someone associated with the Polo scene as that is something we really want to go see some of that = and the cute boys of course! So the plans so far is to go do a bit of walking around today, familiarising ourselves with the city and seeing a few things before deciding what to do tonight, maybe a bar, jazz club or good dinner, we will see. Then Deep Dish and Lady Tron tomorrow and Football on sunday....action packed, we have to move out our room on Tuesday and we havent yet planned where we will be staying for the final 2 days but im sure something will come our way...here's hoping, will start a little search tomorrow. We just had breakfast which was interesting, 2 little rolls with a tub of caramel and a tub of the brown variety of jam - interesting! I am yet to try out the Argentinian steaks! iLL KEEP YOU UPDATED ON THAT FRONT.