San Martin de los Andes

Or San Martin for short, is a beautiful sleepy little town just on the edge of the Andes, and is an ideal place for hiking and enjoying nature. Now, we've doen quite a bit of that the last few days and will probably do more of it in El Calafate, so we've just relaxed a bit here.

But that doesn't mean its not eventful. When we were casually walking around in town, we suddenly stumbled on a London bus. We were trying to get away from that busy bustling city, and this place could probably not feel farther from London, so seeing that bus was highly unexpected.

Then as we kept walking down the street, we stumbled on an Irish pub called Dublin. Ok, I admit, anywhere thats worth visiting eventually ends up having an Irish pub, its just one of those facts of life. But it still felt a bit out of place.

Our third surprise for the day was when we say a sign for a chocolate store called "Smaken by Johan" , yes Swedes get everywhere but still unexpected. It was even more unexpected to find out Johan was Dutch and still spelt his name with only one 'n'.

So San Martin is a nice relaxing place that keeps you on your toes we concluded and went back to our hostel, where the token guitar strummer had found some girls to jam with. Or so we thought. Turns out the two guys in our hostel decided to go travelling with their guitars on their break from univerity. They had been playing by the street the day before, when the two girls passed. They liked what they heard so they invited them to share their gig at the Irish pub (where else?), and they were now busy trying to reherse enough songs to make it through the night, and they were good. So in the evening (Argentinan time) we headed over to the pub and had some beer and enjoyed the show, which was really really good. Not just considering they had only been rehersing for two days and that one of the guys only had played guitar for three months. It was really, really good, and they played for well over two hours as well, quite impressive....

We'll definately go see them when they play the stadiums in Europe in a few years time. :)

Milford Sound, Wanaka and Fox

"Wireless internet networks are found in this area"... we had one of those moments sat outside a cafe by Lake Matheson in the middle of Middle-Earth and this pops up on the computer as I opened it up to write this latest post. Sometimes New Zealand is so cool... At other times, like over the past couple of days when we've been out of mobile phone coverage (don't even think about internet), it's been a little less connected.

But, back to Milford Sounds and we woke up bright and early the next morning (breakfast was served from 6:50 until 7:30) to cruise down to the mouth of the fjord where it was very easy to realise why Cook missed it on both of his journeys by the sound. The entrance is truly hidden from view with a series of overlapping ranges and the rocky waves dissuaded all but the most dedicated seal-hunter from discovering the Sound. When it was discovered, it was quickly named as the most beautiful that New Zealand had to offer and rubbing the sleep from our eyes at 7:30 in the morning, we could easily see why.

The rest of the journey was the usual beautiful scenery followed by even more. The clouds had cleared and we managed to see the tops of the surrounding snow-covered mountains that we had missed the night before.

The beautiful day continued during our drive back from Milford Sounds to Queensland where we turned north to follow the coast road to Wanaka where we would stay the night before heading onward.

Wanaka
We arrived in Wanaka a little ahead of schedule and managed to check ourselves into the highly rated Wanakabakpaka hostel and went for a wander down to the bay. The weather had been so lovely today that it was very nice to stretch our legs a bit and soak in a little of the local scenery.

As the trip to our next stop (Haas) was only 3 hours long, we decided to spend the morning in Wanaka and rent a couple of bikes and see a bit of the scenery. Or so I thought. Apparently Johan's idea differed a little from mine which I should have picked up when we hired a couple of mountain bikes. It seems that Wanaka is the mountain biking capital of NZ and no trip is complete if you haven't careened down the tracks and attempted death- and gravity-defying feats. Once he realised that that wasn't going to happen with me behind the wheel, we headed for the more gentle path around Lake Wanaka and up one of the rivers flowing out of it. A very lovely trip.

After the bike ride we jumped into the car and headed out of town. It was impossible not to stop at Puzzleworld which, as it turned out, had one of the best mazes that I've been to for a while. The beautiful weather also helped.

Haas
We followed the road, stopping from time to time to do a walk or two on our way to Haas. We are both puzzled about why this town exists as it seems to have nothing more than an industry in whitebait and its convenient stop off point on your way to one of the glaciers going for itself. There is nothing else that we could find there. Puzzling...

The next morning we pushed on to the second big pull of this part of the country... the glaciers.

Fox Glacier
Not to be confused with the well known sweets... I had never (knowingly) seen a glacier before - apparently I may have skied on one in the Alps but it's hard to tell with all the snow and ice there - but that experience is completely different from when you encounter one in a forest setting in the early New Zealand summer. The pictures struggle to fully capture the colour and magnitude of this glacier and as we watched with jealously, the hikers on the top of the glacier, we looked forward to our turn tomorrow as we too ascend the Franz Joseph glacier and uncover some of the secrets of this ancient block of ice.