Sudamerica

Well now, here we are... I´ve had to force myself to sit and write a blog entry as i´ve just been having too much craic to get around to it. Either that or I´m just lazy... I´d say its more of the latter to be honest, but plenty of the former also. ANYWAY where was I?... oh yes, South America, we made it. All great so far. All yappin in spanish and sunny weather and chica´s and amigo´s, wine, empanadas, tango and all that jazz... By the way I apologise in advance for the dodgy punctuation marks or misspellings that can occur. Among the challenges to be faced here are spanish keyboards (which initially took me ten minues to figure out the @ symbol), usualy slow computers, and at the moment, a loud soudtrack of bad argentinian ´reggeton´ music being forced down my ears and distracting me...But thats only some of the very few negative things about South America so far. We´ve had very little to complain about so far. (i still cant figure out how to type a proper aposthrophe on this computer.. this ´´´thing is all im getting)

So ill try one last time to get to the point... Yes, we landed Chile just under 3 weeks ago. Stayed there for a few days to get over the jetlag from NZ which wasnt easy after a 13 hour flight back traveling BACK IN TIME!! After a couple of days in santiago we took a night bus over the andes which was quite a nice journey at night time; seeing clear starry skies over the silouhette of the andes. Through the border; passport checks, immigration procedures at 4am... and on into Argentina. Our first stop here was Mendoza, a nice city near the andes full of students and famous for its wineries. We arrived at 7am with two additions to team BAD who we´d picked up in Chile; Graeme from Scotland (big G or wee graeme as we dubbed him) and Pablo the Peruvian whose knowledge of Spanish was a big help for the next few days. With no reservations made, and feeling groggy from a sleepless nightbus, things werent looking good as we stumbled out of two taxis on a street where we had been told there were "a few hostels"... 5 people lookin for a bed at 7am with no bookings would´nt usually have much of a chance. As luck would have it; the second hostel we lugged our stuff to had exactly 5 beds ready and waiting for us. Not only that but breakfast was laid out in the common area all for us, there was a pool table, big tv room, free internet, and coffee table area full of books, magazines and a shisha pipe all available for use should we desire. And better still, within minutes of arriving, Rodrigo at reception decided to invite us all to play indoor football that night with his mates. After which of course, a nice and cheap steak dinner would be had. A good introduction to Argentina I think.