Our last day-and-a-half was spent in Tucumán. Well, it was actually a couple of days, but a lack of sleep on the overnight bus from Córdoba (because of a lying ticket agent’s description of the seat) meant that I crashed out as soon as we got to our room and we lost half a day before we could get out and about to get acquainted with the city.

The fact that it was where Argentina’s independance was declared not only makes it a very important city in Argentina, but also determined much of the sightseeing we’d do during our time there. The most signifigant being the Casa de la Independencia and the cathedral. We also noted during our first stroll through the city that the siesta here was more obvious than any of the other cities we’d visited previously. All of the shops closed and the streets were deserted for a few hours. But considering that the suburbs are only 8 blocks away from the city’s main square – yet another Plaza Independencia – everyone must’ve gone home to sleep.

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We didn’t have flat beds on the bus ride from Mendoza, so we were pretty tired when we arrived in Córdoba. We had to wait in the common room at the hostel for a few hours until the room was available.Then we crashed for a bit and headed into town to see what was going on. Our hostel was in a great location just a couple of blocks from the truly beautiful Plaza General San Martin. It was early evening when we went out and we were amazed at how beautiful the central part of the city is. The buildings are beautifully lit and restored, we just walked and gawked for quite a while. Most things are closed on Mondays in Argentina and there are very few people about, so we decided to see a movie. Let’s just say that it was called ‘Encuentro Explosivo’ then I don’t have to embarrass us by telling you what it was.

The next day we took in some of the sights. Again we were a little thwarted by closings during the middle of the day (namely the supposedly great English tour of the university which we tried to visit three times, on the final time it was open, but they weren’t running the last tour of the day, the one we had arrived for), but we managed to see the Cordóba Cabildo and the very sobering Museo de la Memoria. We certainly didn’t know much of the history of Argentina when we arrived, but found out shortly after arriving in Buenos Aires that during the late 70s and early 80s the government ‘disappeared’ a startling number of people who didn’t support it. Many of the people who were taken were frighteningly young.

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We were pretty sad to leave our friends and BA behind, but fortunately we were on our way to the perfect place to drown our sorrows. We began on the bus with red wine and champagne. Our very polite bus attendant approached us just after we left the terminal and questioned us in Spanish. Unfortunately we couldn’t understand, and upon my polite ‘¿Hablas inglés?’ he said ‘A little… let’s play bingo’. A minute later he handed us a bingo card, grabbed a microphone and off we went!

We arrived not so fresh at 8.30am on Wed and jumped in a taxi to our B&B. Unable to check in for a couple of hours we stepped out to check out the area and see if we could find a wine bar. Unfortunately the town was still pretty sleepy, so we had a coffee and some medialunas and looked around for a wine tour for the next day. Later that day we found a great place and booked on a bit of a posh tour, and as a bonus they gave us a voucher for a free glass of wine! Happy at last, we made our way to The Vines of Mendoza and ate cheese, drank wine and chatted to the staff who were all too happy to begin our vino education.

We dragged ourselves out of bed the following morning, ready to be picked up at 9am to start ‘tasting’. Already in the bus when we arrived were Bill and Mark from DC. Lovely guys who had already done a tour with the same company only two days before, a good sign! Mark is a Spanish teacher so it was pretty interesting having him around. Soon after, we picked up Walter, a Brasilian guy who was VERY into his wines. Needless to say, we felt a little like children amongst the grown ups! However, I was to discover towards the end of the day that Bill and Mark didn’t take it too seriously, when I commented that one of the reds smelled like washing up liquid and they chuckled along with me!

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…eat a couple of 450g perfectly cooked, juicy Bife de Lomos and a huge bowl of papas fritas, after a starter of grilled provolone cheese, then followed by a huge slice of ‘Guilt Cake’, and all accompanied by a great Malbec from Mendoza. But we managed it in Buenos Aires, more than once… a lot more than once in fact.

It’s been a long time since our last post, and we had a bit of time in Australia before we left to begin the last section of our journey in South America, so I’ll start back then. Here goes… this is going to be a long post!

After our wedding we had a wonderful couple of weeks up in Cairns, where it was a comfortable winter temperature of 28°C. We had enough time to relax after the wedding, to enjoy some post-wedding quiet time with family, and to start to think about a rough plan for South America. At the beginning of June we said goodbye to Cairns and returned to Sydney to catch up with friends for a few days. The World Cup had begun and the forced football fever had temporarily gripped a large enough portion of the nation to warrant a big screen in Darling Harbour and football-themed ads on television. It wasn’t the best place in the world to be, with the tournament taking place in South Africa, and after finding myself as the only person willing to get up at 3am to watch England play the USA, the following night it was a little easier to stay awake. It was the night that the ‘Socceroos’ (an unfortunate nickname) would be playing their opening match against the Germans at 3.30am. After spending the evening out with friends, Janna (an Australian/German friend, and a big F1 fan) and I decided to pop to a bottle shop on the way back to her place in Bondi to buy our fuel for a night/morning of sport – lots of Doritos, a decent sized bottle of vodka and plenty of Red Bull. Alexandra promptly crashed out on the sofa after a single sip of the drink, leaving Janna and I to finish off the rest while watching the Canadian Grand Prix. At 3am, after the race (which Hamilton won, the only English success of this post) we woke Alexandra and all stumbled, red-eyed and weary, to the local pub to watch the football. After the Aussies were comprehensively handed their coats by the Germans, we were surprised to run into some people from Framestore – small world and all that – and at 7am despite us feeling like zombies we went with them for breakfast to have a chat and a catch-up. Afterwards, Alexandra and I decided to try and get a few hours sleep.

After a great few days in Sydney with good food, drink and friends, we didn’t want to put our backpacks on again, knowing that it’d mean the last chapter of our trip was beginning. Despite our reluctance we caught our flight to Buenos Aires excited at all the things we’d be doing there. With a 13 hour flight, and with an awkward time difference from Sydney, we knew we’d be tired when we arrived, but a lucky upgrade to premium economy certainly helped soften the blow. Considering our exhilarating but exhausting time in India, our intention in South America is to spend longer in quite a few places over the few months we’ve got here. BA was one of those places and we were looking to spend at least 4 weeks there to really get to know the place.

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So, as many of you will already know… we got married.

We decided quite a while ago that we wanted to get married, but we just weren’t quite sure how or when. We thought maybe we’d do it when we got back to London when we finished travelling, but we weren’t too keen on the stress of organising a big wedding. I must admit that the thought had occurred to us to get married while we were away travelling, but we hadn’t really taken the idea that seriously until we were in Cairns in January. We took my Dad’s bike out a few times and rode up the coast and decided that Palm Cove was where we wanted to do it.

So we made some pretty big decisions in a pretty short space of time, booked the venue, chose a dress and then jetted out to India. We didn’t give my Mum all that much notice, but she managed to organise the fine details with about 6 weeks to go.

Anthony’s family flew out from the UK and joined my family and some close family friends for the ceremony on 20th May. It was small, calm, and for us, perfect.

Thank you to those of you who made such huge efforts to be there with us, and to everyone else for understanding why we did it this way.

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