November/December 2007 We started our months holiday in Argentina by flying via Madrid to Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires has a lot of atmosphere with its wide streets, leather shops and general bustle. Also it was interesting to visit the huge cemetery, City of the Dead, where famous Eva Peron is buried. We then flew up to the North, to Salta. Here we enjoyed the large square in the centre of Salta and then we went off to the Tren A Las Nubes (the train in the clouds). At the time we went the train was not running, but perhaps later it will. It’s very high, 4,200 metres, hence train in the clouds. On the way we saw a Gaucho festival advertised, so next day we got a taxi and off we went. It was an amazing festival with 200-300 gaucho’s riding through the streets – very few Europeans around. We hired a car and drove to Cachi and Cafayate. The scenery in the North was fantastic with wonderful rock formations with strands of colours in. We went to the Indian ruins at Quilmes and to a local winery (Cafayate is a large wine growing area). Now it was down towards the South to Barilochi, called little Switzerland with its Swiss style houses, shops full of chocolate and lakes. We also went to El Bolson – Ann wanted to go here to take some photos of hop growing for a film on hops she is hoping to produce. We went round a hopyard and talked, with the help of a young school girl interpreting to the farmer as he spoke no English. It was here also that we booked up for a ride and when we arrived there were just the two of us and a local who took us on a ride through woods and over wide rivers to see condors – quite an experience. Then a short flight to El Calafate so we could visit the Glacier Perito Moreno. The Glacier was amazing and we booked to go on a short walk on it. Putting on crampons was interesting and quite different walking. Laguna Nimez is a good spot for bird watching Our next flight was another local one to Ushuaia at the bottom end of Argentina. We found out here that one could occasionally get a late booking to Antarctica – this we put in our memory bank for another time. You will see from our travels that we did this in 2012. In Ushuaia we went on a trip for a lake side BBQ and saw the damage the beavers had done in the woods. We flew to Puerto Madryn where the Welsh settlers landed in 1886 . We went whale watching, saw the huge colony of Magellanic penguins, the largest 175,000 pairs, sea lions and seals and took a trip to the Welsh settlement town at Gaiman where Welsh is still spoken and taught in the local schools.. Eventually it was back to Buenos Aires for our flight home after a very hectic and interesting holiday.