the great south

we are looking at the great south right in the face! :D we're almost there at Ushuaia!! now at puerto san julian, a seaside town about 300km from one of the greatest sights on south america and probably on planet earth.. the amazing Perito Moreno Glacial! the past few days in summary? you wouldn't believe half the stuff i write...

went through a couple of interesting towns, the most memorable of which was El Bolson, where we met the very interesting Chiche, a friend of my friend's, an excitable man who runs a construction firm but trains horses by "loving" them and can't wait to leave his business to his children and go off into the virgin forests of Argentina to live a simple life amongst the great Alcerces (Patagonian cypress) trees, and the most incredible of all, a Mr Marranti, who researches UFOs and has had several personal encounters with them since he was 2 1/2!! he draws these really surrealistic paintings and has done about 700 of them so far!! perfectly normal-looking people, they typified the new "hippies" of El Bolson. We also went through another national park, the Parque Nacional Los Alcerces, a great 153,000 hectare national park of incredible botanical riches, saw more amazing lakes, saw and photographed the really beautiful and rare Patagonian Flamingoes (really pink, really beautiful), saw bouncy llamas in the arid dry flatlands and dead llamas in salt pans, and encountered some strong winds that almost blew me away while i was standing still.

we just ate some really nice seafood, had incredible vino blanco, lemon mousse dessert, had a nice and hot shower and i feel top of the world..