25th May to 2nd June - Tupiza, a Gaucho ranch and Buenos Aires

We took a very long, rocky and dusty road to get to Tupiza. We got delayed behind a coach which had a flat tyre and was doing a change....90 minutes later, Rogan had gone to help and they were just finishing. Rogan did well driving that road in the dark though as it was a bit Death Road-esque. Such roads do provide cracking scenery though...till they get dark. Tupiza is famous for some striking scenery so I took a jeep tour with Steve and Karen and we had a great day. Vanessa and I were rudely awakened on night 2......with a rock through our ground floor window. Luckily it didn't get past the long curtain, which was lucky as V's bed was right by the window. Just drunk kids. The interruption to our sleep was most unwelcome though, as our alarms were set for 5am for a 6am departure. Yawn!

The Valley of the Penis's .... I'm not kidding














Some VERY dusty roads as we dropped altitude (hurrah!), an easy border back into Argentina, a reintroduction of sandflies, which we haven't seen for a while, a bit of camping and then we arrived at a ranch to stay for 3 nights. A very homely place and some enforced relaxation as it's a trekking and horse riding place really. The river was very pretty and the food/wine good so out came my book and the hours ticked on by happily. Whilst clearing our room of bugs, we discovered these were stink beatles. As Mikkel picked one up, it "phuffed" at him. It didn't bother us for long but it did put Anthony off our room and he ended up in his tent outside.....which then got nibbled by a horse at 5am. Ha.

Mikkel feeding the biggest goat in the world











Rogan at the ranch


After the ranch, then on to our final night of camping, a curry dinner and plenty of music, booze and fireside chats. Then we packed up the tents for the final time and headed off to Buenos Aires in winter, the very place we started off 6 months ago in the summer. I even ended up with Vanessa, Lisa and Heather, in the same room we met each other in, almost as though the last 6 months hadn't happened. We went out for our last dinner, ending the trip as we started it, with big Argentinian steak and red wine; we stick to what we're good at.
Jeanne, half a beer's nothing. I got Keith to neck half a bottle of red wine on his last night in B.A. Ha.


The next morning saw 10 of us plus our two crew leave for Uruguay, a final 10 day extension to the trip and our 10th country. We left those who were going home at the hotel and this one made for a tearful goodbye to some people who have become great friends over the last 6 months. I've seen this people every day for 6 months (bar the odd excursion here and there where we may have split off) and it's strange to think I now won't see some of them.