Onwards another 290kms south to a town called Esquel on the borders of a National park called Los Alerces. It was originally an offshoot of a Welsh Colony at Chubut and still has something of a pioneer feel about it being an open town in the middle of fertile, breezy valley with a backdrop of […]

We pull into Bariloche beautifully situated at the other end of Lake Nahuel Huapi at the foot of Cerro Otti. Another tourist town geared for winter skiing with numerous hotels, bed and breakfast lodgings, expensive restaurants and chocolate shops amongst its chalet-style stone and wooden buildings. At this point the car gave up, completely refusing […]

We move on to Villa La Angostura taking a route known as the ‘Seven Lakes Drive‘. The road was unpaved, the surface not too bad but topped with loose stone, some of them rather large, and the underside of our magnificent car took a considerable hammering after which 5th gear disappeared. The seven lakes were […]

We are hiring a car to drive through the country. Of course I had planned the journey with my usual military precision but, unfortunately, this collapsed at the first sign of trouble: the hire car company had rented out the car they reserved for us until the following day so that we had to choose […]

We returned to Buenos Aires for the final of the polo having collected Lauren who took a bus from Santiago for a happy mother and daughter reunion. The game was the first maximum handicap in the history of the competition with all eight players holding a perfect 10. Despite the clouds threatening rain, it remained […]

We fly to Mendoza, a city of 800,000 people situated 1,100km west of Buenos Aires at the foot of the Andes. We have come here to taste the wines from the largest wine-producing area in Argentina. Besides wine, Mendoza is famous for being the point at which the liberator, Jose de San Martin set out […]