Cough, splutter ...

We arrived back in Ushuaia on another glorious sunny day and were instantly struck by exhaust fumes - considering Ushuaia is probably as clean (air-wise) as you can get and it suddenly sinks in just how clean the air was in Antarctica. A good job we weren't heading straight back to London!

If you've seen one glacier, you've seen them all ...
Or so we thought! Arriving in El Calafate for the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares a little apprehensive. We'd organised the trip before we went to Antarctica and, frankly, was there any point? Actually yes, Perito Moreno was spectacular and very different to anything we'd seen already. It's huge and every few seconds you hear echoing thuds and splashing water as carvings break off.

However, we were a little 'iced-out' so we gave the other glaciers a miss and took a trip to the Petrified Forest instead - no not a bunch of scared trees but prehistoric trees and rocks petrified by volcanic ash millions of years ago and dinosaur fossils. In fact, fossilised bones from the largest ever dinosaur was discovered here a couple of years ago. An eerily beautiful place, it was well worth the visit.

Andean Crossing - Part One
After a brief stop in Bariloche - a tourist town in the Argentine lake district renowned for its chocolate (wonder why we went there - Ali???) - where we spent a day horseriding around the national parks mountains and lakes - we made our way back into Chile (by bus of course!).

Our first, but by no means our last, Andean crossing overland, we were glad we'd organised to go during the day. A spectacular drive along ruta de los siete lagos (7 lakes road), passing quaint mountain towns along the way, we arrived in Pucon battered, bruised (from the horseriding) and aching (from 9 hours on a bus).

To our delight we'd inadvertently booked into our best hostel yet! 'La Tetera' is one of the few places we've stayed that deserves a mention because it was good - comfortable, clean, friendly and the best breakfasts in South America (though anywhere serving something other than bread, jam, ham and cheese was going to impress us!).

Pucon itself is also one of the nicest towns we've been to - laid-back, friendly and unpretentious with volcanic views, lovely lakes and some great restaurants and happy hour bars. Needless to say we didn't do too much more than appreciate the surroundings from the beach and nearby natural rock thermal springs - we did contemplate climbing the smoldering volcano but frankly we were enjoying the peace and quiet too much (although this was disturbed daily at 12pm with the volcano warning claxon test - are we the only ones to wonder what would happen in the event of a midday eruption?!).