Argentina

We arrived in Argentina late February and after a few days in Buenos Aires catching up with Anna Templeton we went to stay with my God-Mother, Sally Campbell and her two sons, Roddy and Tommy on their estancia near Carlos Cesares about 4 hours south west of BA.
We had a very comfortable and relaxing few days here.  Bex and I both got on horses for the first time in about 30 years and enjoyed evening rides and herding cattle.

Estancia La Ballena

Spring fed swimming pool

Sal-Pal and H

Tommy and Roddy

Out riding

Natural

Sal-Pal's cousin, Serry and her daughters Sakia and Lily

Its Becko & H-o in Oz!

On our way from India to South America we stopped over in Australia for a couple of weeks to get back into lager, meat eating and catching up with friends.  In fact we managed to 'couch surf' (freeload) in the most upmarket way...

Firstly Chessie and Archie had us to stay in Manly, Sydney; they set us up with maps, guide books and a sat nav for our roadtrip.  We drove down from Sydney to stay with the lovely Pip, Jan & Izzie for a few nights, before we hit the coastal road all the way up to Adelaide.   En route, in Barwon Heads, Davina & Ruaraidh, Alice & Jack Gunn very kindly lent us their beautiful beach house and we had a wonderful couple of days with them exploring the beach and being bracingly British swimming in the nippy sea. Bex, Matt (Harry's old work mate) and their 2 children Callum & Michaela had us to stay in Adelaide and took us on an epic tour of the vineyards.  We then flew back to Sydney for a couple of nights with newly engaged Michael and Danielle.   All in all a wonderful and luxurious whistle stop tour of Oz!

Chessie showing us the delights of the big budgie swim, across Manly Bay.

The boys and their budgies...

Harry explaining how big his budgie is to Archie!

F*@^&*g Hippy!

Harry's facial hair reaches new moustache twizzling heights

Pip, Jan & Harry

boing

Terry at Belles Beach - remember the last scene of  the film Point Break?

burrowing children on the beach

familia Gunn

Davina & Jack

Alice & Jack horse riding

sunset lagers at Barwon Heads

Matt and Bex Reid with Harry

Maybe we should spend some time apart....

Michaela and Callum

Vineyard tour

Passion in the vines

amazing, brilliant things to do, check out these websites...

 Extreme Bike Tours- India with Zander Combe

Royal Enfield bike tours in Himalayas & Southern India

Riding in Patagonia   &   Fishing in Patagonia with Georgie Davenport

Harry into his 10th Fish!

Kerela Cleanse - February

We spent 2 very chilled weeks at Dr Franklin's Panchakarma retreat in the Kerelan coconut trees.   (Cos clearly we needed a holiday within a holiday?!) Sadly Harry missed out on the ayurveda treatments and yoga due to his very special and unique backside issues.  But a pure veg diet and just being there did wonders,  in fact annoyingly he lost more weight than any of the people in there.  I meanwhile diligently went to yoga most mornings at 6:30am and endured all manner of oil treatments only to emerge at the end of 2 weeks with mild acne, a rice pot and feeling tired and emotional!

the very peaceful gardens which we flopped about in hammocks

Harry absorbed the teachings of yoga at a leisurely pace, while I went to the classes!

the 'steam bath'...

...a somewhat heath robinson cupboard,
with a kettle heater and wooden stool to sit on!

Terry made lots of friends.

Hanuman,  the half monkey,
 half man god helping us on our journey.

in just 2 weeks I went from this to...

... this!

So after 2 weeks of clean living we decided to head back north to Alex and Lucy and got straight back into long Goan lunches on the beach!

beautiful ancient banyan tree on the way to lunch 

strange creatures dwell in these woods...

sunset, after long lunch

I bought Harry some sandlewood beads, given he is so working the ethnic look this year.  We now have 4 kgs extra to lug around in our ruck sack.

'La Plage' restaurant -  best chocolate pud ever!

Parting cuddles as we left goa, to catch overnight train back to Mumbai and head to Oz...