My weekend finally came to an end.  This is therefore the last post in this blog. I will let the older posts be active for a while, as a reference for other travellers who may come across my blog in searches.
Thanks for reading.

River Valley

I was not going to arrive until midnight. A bit late and I wonder why I didn't book an earlier train back to River Valley as I arrived well in time to Stockholm City. It did however give me the opportunity to walk around a bit (although I still had my backpack to carry so I didn't venture too far from the central station).

Springtime in Stockholm is not too different from autumn in Argentina but I was happy to not arrive in the colder months. Only 10 days left of my holiday... :(

Barcelona

Last stop before touching home ground included a day or so in Barcelona. There are acutally a lot of things to see and do in and around this city but the spirit and energy was just not the same after having left South America. The thought about starting work is also getting closer, and, the inevitable: the end on my endless weekend.

All in all, it was a quite pleasant stay in a lively city.

Picture challenge

So now a few new countries are up for a picture-vote. Admire six amazing photos from my travel on http://mewpictures.blogspot.com/

Don't forget to place your vote for one. It is important.

/Mattias

Madrid

A travelling 15th century writer expressed about the then small-scale medieval city: “in Madrid there is nothing except from what you bring with you”. Since that epoch, the Royal Spanish capital has changed a lot and developed into one of Europe’s most fascinating metropolises.

I chose to briefly stop here as Madrid makes the top-three on my personal favourite-European-cities-list every day of the week.

And the flight by the way; it was a dreadfully long flight with many stops and delays going Buenos Aires-Bogotá-Cali-Madrid. But compared to the buses I have been travelling on for the last 10 months, this was like heaven. They even gave me warm food. I am used to spend a good 20 hours on a bus, eating carried-on dry bread with water and only going to toilet when the bus stops at stations. And even better; Avianca is a Colombian carrier so they had Aguila – my favourite beer. In fact, I was so relaxed when I landed in Madrid that I didn’t even have a jet-lag.

Now this entry ended up saying very little about Madrid itself but what do I care. I add some pictures below.

Madrid:

Buenos Aires

Trip is nearly at its end now. Buenos Aires will be my last city on the South American continent before heading over towards Europe. Good old Europe. I miss a place where everything works but most of all it would be nice to finally be able to change clothes as I have been wearing this same junk for a year.

I heard they still had lots of snow back home. Maybe the temperature of Buenos Aires will turn out to not be so bad after all. Here the days are sunny and quite alright but it gets very chilly during the nights. I am pleased that all the hostels had warm blankets as isolation is just slightly better than English houses.

I say “all the hostels” because it is the peak of the tourist season during Easter. Many places are fully booked and I was never able to find any (of the good ones that is) places that had vacancy throughout. I stayed in Buenos Aires a total of four nights and managed to sleep in three different hostels. The fourth night I didn’t sleep at all but stayed up until 3am, when I took off for the airport as my flight was one of the early morning-ones.

I can inform you that nothing overly exciting happened in Buenos Aires although it is a quite pleasant city to stroll around in. I missed a few worth-while neighbourhoods and when I went to buy tickets for the Boca Juniors match, it was sold out but on the whole, I saw a few bits and pieces and had an agreeable time the last few days on the South American continent.

It was at least good as long as it lasted.


Buenos Aires:

Puerto Madryn

There were no direct buses to Puerto Madryn from Perito Moreno - obviously. I had to change in my other favourite place: Comodoro Rivadavia. As the bus left so late, around 17-ish (and it takes five hours), I was a bit worried that there would not be any buses further on but luckily there were a couple of departures at 1 am and I only needed to spend a few hours in the bus station.

Puerto Madryn is famous for its coastal wildlife as the fauna is very diverse around the peninsula. Unfortunately, the whales that normally can be spotted here were not due until another few months so going on one of the tours, the most exciting one could expect to see was probably a sealion or some other lame thing. So I didn't bother. I will return here in October one day and see the whales.

My birthday

On Mr Perret's good recommendation I headed towards the village Perito Moreno with the hope of finding something spectacular. It was not in the Lonely Planet (why not?) so I thought it should be quite blessed from bothersome Israeli tourists (yes the Israelis have now taken over the throne of the most annoying tourists on the planet).

Some research showed that close to Perito Moreno, there is a famous cave with ancient hand-marks: "The cave of hands". And that was pretty much all I could find out on Internet. It must have been this place Philippe meant, I thought.

I woke up early on Sunday the 5th of April 2009 - Fnasse's birthday. The well-manned tourist information office, which was about the only thing that was open when I arrived late the night before (apart from the pizza-place), had two girls in until 23:00! Amazing, must have been some kind of government-funded employment scheme for poor people in a doomed remote countryside village. They had informed me that the tours to the cave departed at 07:00 when there were tourists.

Unfortunately, the tours only left every second day: on even days. On top of that, the tour on the sixth of April had been cancelled so the next one was due on the eight. What a laughable place; not even having a tour to the signature-tourist-attraction on a weekend. I could obviously not wait for the next tour so I decided to screw the cave and went to the bus station.

There I learned that the only buses left the village at 17:00 in the afternoon. Always like that on Sundays. Noone travels here they said. So it meant I had about eight hours to kill in Perito Moreno.

This Sunday everything was closed. The restaurants, the shops (but there were hardly any shops to talk about apart from the car service shops), the cyber-cafe, the church, the bakery, the bank and... hmm... can't remember seing anything more. But the tourist information was open. Same girls. I visited twice, asked for places to go. They pointed me to a look-out mountain (which was more like a few steps climb to the top of a gravel pit) and a walk along a river (which didn't have any water in it). And yea, the mini-market was open too so I didn't have to starve to death - bless the lord.

But I was bored like hell.

Easily the worst birthday ever.

I think I finally figured out why Perito Moreno is not mentioned in the Lonely Planet though, so only one mystery remains; what the heck did Mr Perret see in this place? If I didn't know him better I would suspect some kind of brain damage.

Los Antiguos

I thought I had found one of the most quiet towns when I went to Calafate. However, coming to Los Antiguos, a bit further north (also on a Chilean border crossing; no I will still not Cross!), it got even worse. Or even quieter.

Los Antiguos had two places to sleep, a fast food place, a couple of other places to eat and a tourist office. There were not much to do around town and if you stay longer than a day alone you will get really really bored. Fortunately I didn't have to be there totally alone as I met a Uruguayan friend on the bus and we spent a few hours walking in the hills and to the nearby lake.

Los Antiguos is quite beautiful but it seems that people only come here for the border. I was the only one who wasn't going to Chile and the guy from Uruguay was the only one who decided to stay a day extra in town; all others left with the first bus in the morning after.

Pictures from Los Antiguos:

Calafate

Close to the Chilean border, in the Andes, lies the tranquil little village of Calafate. Many tourists pass by here on their way to or from Chile and fortunately for them, there is one popular, huge, unmissable tourist attraction right here, in the nearby National Park of Glaciers: the Perito Moreno Glacier. I, however, decided to stay in Argentina and not attempt more border crossings. I have already entered Argentina five times, one from Bolivia, one from Uruguay and three from Chile. My passport is not really begging for more Argentine stamps. They (including the Chile stamps) are also quite big; you can only fit four on one page. Going to Chile and back would generate four more unnecessary stamps.

The Perito Moreno Glacier is an advancing glacier, which means that it is moving up to two metres per day. It starts further up in the mountain and abruptly ends in a lake. The born-to-be-a-tourist-attraction feature comes from its mammoth action: when the glacier is moving forward, it causes huge ice blocks at the end to regularly break off and fall into the lake, creating colossal noises. I managed to get a glimpse of a 50-60 metre high ice block collapsing into the lake. Magnificent.

Don't forget to look at the two magic pictures below.