A day of heaven and hell (not necessarily in that order)

We are picked up in a mini bus at the ungodly hour of 7 am and whisked across the pampas with a group of randoms. Apparently the driver is bilingual, however one of those languages is not English! However he is very good at shouting at us in Spanish.

He stops the van in buttfucknowhere and orders us out of the van and indicates this is the Argie border post. We wait behind a queue of about 50 which snakes into a log cabin. It is now raining but fortunately I am wearing one of my warmest bonds T shirts. After about an hour and a half we make our way to the solitary window and get our stamp in the passport. We are told we were processed in record time as there was a power failure and all the computers were out.

Our ever helpful driver hustles us back into the van and we are driven to the Chilean border where we are processed in about 5 minutes.

We are then joined by an English speaking guide who tells us we can have lunch for free! I opt for the burger (rookie error-.2/10). Then it is another 2 hours of bone shaking bus ride to the Explora Hotel, where we are met by a bevy of attractive personnel whose only job in life is to look after our every whim. We are invited to go for an introductory walk, straight up a nearby mountain with howling winds trying to remove us at every step.

Then it is back to our digs where we must choose our walks for the next day before being allowed to rest. It turns out the key feature of all the walks is that we can scoop large quantities of chocolate bars from a communal bowl.

Taken from our bedroom window

Dinner restores our faith in humankind.