Tours in Expeditions

08/10/2022

I think we're moving away slowly from Facebook, if you still would like to follow our story, progress and life in Argentina, check out our Instagram:

www.instagram.com/toursinexpeditions

25/08/2022

This is our shared living space in the terrain with kitchen, toilet and shower. It is inside big bus that we bought in a junkyard and converted into confortable home.
Who would like to live in a bus?

10/03/2022

Hey guys we haven't update you in a long time. After a year of work, we have built 2 cabins for renting out a Mongolian yurt, a tree house and a convertido bus for employees 2 toilet, 200sq meters with grass 120 trees and 89 flowering plants with a variety of animals

04/10/2021

We are proud to announce, that during last weekend we got awarded with KOLOSY, during the Meeting of Travelers, Sailors and Mountaineers in Poland. It's of the most important and prestigious awards given in Poland every year for the most unique travel.
We didn't expect that, we were quite shocked, but happy at the same time. We're sorry that we couldn't be there personally to do the presentation, however we hope the audience enjoyed online version.

12/08/2021

30/07/2021

The progress in our terrain:
Mongolian Yurt and Treehouse are ready to rent. We also have an old bus in which Mo made kitchen, toilet and two bedrooms for us to stay and for our employees. There's hot water and electricity run by solar power. Oh and we even got WiFi!
We found out that it snows in Potrerillos, sometimes quite heavily in winter and then huge crowd of people comes from Mendoza city to see the snow.
Bad news is that we're still separated as a family, it soon will be a year that Angi has left Argentina and can't come back, because of ridiculous covid restrictions.

01/07/2021

27/01/2021

It's been quiet here for the past couple of months and now we're ready to share some update about what we've been up to...

Mo's been working on construction and he finished our first little house for rent - Mongolian Yurt. Next one is a treehouse waiting to be finished, although that's a bit more complicated. How to make a treehouse in a terrain without any single tree? Well, we'll see...:)

Horses are back with us, we rented a trailer to bring them from a farm in Huaco to Potrerillos and they look good after winter. Mo's got also couple of new, 4-legged companions: two German shepherd puppies and a cat. Chickens are next in our plan, as we desperately try to find a solution for ants in the terrain, which are eating absolutely everything.

Argentina is still closed for tourists and we can only hope that by the end of the year, Angi will be able to come back with kids to South America.

17/09/2020

It's been a while and if you're curious what we've been up to, well, we've got some big news...

WE'VE BOUGHT A LAND IN ARGENTINA! In the area of Potrerillos, Mendoza province to be more specific and we'll tell you later, why we've chosen this place.

We've been thinking a lot about settling down for a while, especially since our 4-year old son Iyan, started saying that he doesn't have any friends. He seeks contact with other children and with our style of travel it's hard to find companions for him to play with.

I guess the need to settle down also comes with an age, as we ourselves feel it's time to start building a place we can call home. It happens so, that we chose Argentina for many reasons - it's vast, empty spaces, natural beauty, horse culture and laid-back lifestyle. Sometimes I think we must be crazy wanting to live here and start a business...

So, what's happening with our journey? Horses are still on a ranch in Huaco, we'll get them when Argentina will finally open. We put our expedition on hold for the next two years at least, until we get settled and develop our business. Then we plan to continue traveling on horseback, but in shorter periods of time, for example 3 months every year.

We're excited to start this new chapter of our life, though we've got few years ahead of hard work to convert this piece of desert into something beautiful.

20/08/2020

World photography day

We've had few great photographers joining us during last season of the expedition and we'd like to thank them for the commitment and amazing pictures they left us with.

Mateo: Murch Fotografia
Olivia: www.instagram.com/olivia.sladen

As for our current situation, we've entered Mendoza province, just us, no horses. We're being quarantined in a hotel for 2 weeks and then we'll be looking around for some land to buy.

08/08/2020

We've left horses on the farm in Huaco, they've got hundreds hectares to roam free. Not sure how long they'll stay there, but as the country may remain on lockdown for the rest of the year, we most likely won't finish Argentina this year. It's getting really hot already and riding through northern provinces won't be possible during the summer.

We've been thinking about the future a lot lately, got few ideas what to do with our time, but we'll see how everything works out. For now, we're moving to San Juan next week and will stay in the city for a while.

28/07/2020

It's been two weeks already in our new temporary home. We're renting a room in a little Hospedaje outside Jachal, there's some space to tie the horses, but no grass though. Hay is relatively cheap here, but we'll have to find some paddock to let horses free, if the border with La Rioja province will not open in next month.

We're busy as usual, got some repairs to do in the motorhome, also we're using this time to teach kids how to ride. Iyan can steer and stop a horse on his own, he's also confident enough to trot a bit alone. Ingis so far, is not so good in listening and following instructions, when she's sitting in the saddle:P

Angi always wanted to see how our horses would do with jumping some obstacles, but never had the chance to try it. Here we've got even ground to practice, some wood, buckets and crates to set up small jumps. It's just the beginning of training, but both horses seem to get the idea and are doing good job.

18/07/2020

Talacasto - Jachal, 91 km, 3 days

We're back on national route 40, which we followed all the way. The plus is that it has unlimited side spaces to ride horses and stay away from traffic, the minus is that for 2 days the landscape was really boring. Just flat land, semi-desert, lots of thorny bushes and no natural source of water. Our 200l water tank in the motorhome is broken, so we only rely on big water bottles, allowing us to carry about 120l. It wasn't enough for horses and we run out of water after 2 days. Luckily on the third day we've been passing through little village Niquivil, where we could stock up precious water. Also terrain became grassy and more diverse, making the ride really pleasurable!
We've met some police controls on our way, but only in Niquivil they held us for 20 minutes, checking our papers thoroughly and were desinfecting all passing cars with a pressure washer. Never saw that before.
We'll be staying on the outskirts of Jachal at least for a month, since border with next province La Rioja remains closed.

08/07/2020

Calingasta - Talacasto, 116 km, 4 days

2nd year anniversary of the expedition 7 July 2018 to 7 July 2020

We had a nice diversity of terrain riding in the past week. We rode among white pepper trees, stopped at a eucalyptus grove and collected some leaves, spent a night on top of the mountain, 2224 m, shivering and freezing. Most of the way it was very cold. When we stopped at the summit the van didn't start but luckily there was some traffic and we jumped started it with another vehicle. We almost lost Rocco again, as he went off chasing some goats, we've been looking for him for an hour and then when he came back, we found out he killed one animal.
Our friend Basel continues to ride with us, as he awaits for the borders to open. One night we've spent by the hot springs, but it was too cold to even think about taking our clothes off. When we reached Talacasto, which is a little stopover point on route 40 with a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, we left horses there and drove to San Juan. After shopping and shower we'll go back and continue on horseback towards San Jose de Jachal.

02/07/2020

WE'RE ON THE MOVE! HURRAY!

On 1st July the internal tourism of San Juan province has opened and with transit papers, which we applied for online we left.
Now we're 44km further, at the entrance to the city of Calingasta, taking 2 days rest. Neither we or the horses are in great physical condition after such a long break.

Barreal will stay in our hearts forever, it's such a hidden jem of San Juan province. When we first came we didn't realize how beautiful it is, but we had time and opportunity to discover many amazing places around this little town.
People here has helped us a lot to get through this long and difficult quarantine. We'll be forever grateful especially to Silva's family in whose garden we've spent first 3 months and to wonderful owners of Aire de Barreal hostel, where we've lived last month.

24/06/2020

There hasn't been much horses lately on our horseback expedition fanpage, but that's going to change soon!
In July internal tourism in San Juan province will open, so we're preparing to hit the road again. Horses has been out of work 4 months already and I never thought I'll get to see Pomelo fat. We started riding them again, so they slowly get used to exercise and we had troubles with tightening the girth on both our animals. It's fascinating to watch how their character is changing, Sinn is now amazingly calm and well-behaved, while Pomelo acts like a crazy stallion. He was showing his discontent from the moment we took him off the alfalfa field. We don't get to ride fast while traveling, so we took advantage of the opportunity with Mo and raced across empty streets with our horses, while our friend Basel was taking care of the children. That was a true adrenaline boost!

It's gonna be difficult to get back to daily routine and hard work, after living comfortably in one place for so long...

18/06/2020

First time since 3 months we went out of Barreal! Not far, because only 15km to do some hiking in the colorful hills surrounding the valley. It felt great, just having a little taste of traveling again.

Quarantine is loosening up slightly and Argentinians can travel within the province, if they fill up the form online, giving them permission. As a foreigners we can't do that, online system only accepts Argentinian ID. Several times we spoke to the police, but they refused to give us permission, when we wanted to go to San Juan to do shopping and cash out, as they don't have any power. If locals can travel, why can't we? Eventually Mo managed to get a transit paper from municipality, which doesn't really states anything specific, but apparently that's enough to travel. So Mo went to San Juan for two days and only once police stopped him, but when he showed the paper they've let him pass. There are talks that tourism may open in July.

15/06/2020

Let me present our latest video showing Gaucho festivals, their costumes, riding skills and horses. Some footage showing rodeo competition might be controversial, but that's the part of their culture and as bad as it may look, no horses were harmed. I doesn't obviously means we agree with the way things are done here.

More about Gauchos life you can read in the latest issue of Horsemanship Magazine.

https://youtu.be/UrIDdezkkZI

As a family with 2 little children we've been traveling on horseback through Argentina. We stayed with many Gauchos on our way, learning about their culture ...

08/06/2020

Barreal has been our home for well more than 3 months. We thought we'll start sharing some interesting facts about this place.

Barreal lies between two mountain ranges: Sierra de Tontal - beautiful, colorful hills, most being over 4,000m high and Andes mountain range with peaks over 6,000m.

This area is an important historic place - in January 1817 general San Martin, who's also called libertador of America, was crossing the Andes with his enormous army to free Chile from Spanish rule. It was the first and biggest army crossing the Andes mountain range in whole history. With couple thousands of troops, horses and mules, it took 21 days to do around 500km through the mountains. Now practically every city/village in Argentina has a street or square named after general San Martin, remembering his importance in regaining country's independence.

01/06/2020

We're proud to be featured in latest issue of Horsemanship Magazine! We talk about Gauchos lifestyle, equipment they use, horses in Argentina, our background and inspiration for the journey amongst many other things.

We also have a promo code for our fans - if you enter GAUCHO120 at checkout on http://www.horsemanshipmagazine.co.uk website, you'll get £1 off subscription or single issue purchase.

Happy reading!

25/05/2020

So, we're definitely staying whole winter in Barreal. Even if the quarantine will finish, it's gonna be too cold and too difficult to travel with horses now. Maybe we will travel after mid August.

We've been looking for a house to rent to have some warm place to wait through the winter. There's quite a few options, very affordable, but apparently there's a law forbidding people to rent properties for a new person during quarantine. We went to police to ask what we can do about it, because we need some place for us and children. They gave us some piece of paper saying that we are residents of this town, not something we actually wanted because it's an unusual case. It helps convincing the owners of properties to give us a chance, but legally it doesn't have any value.

We found a hostel and we're renting a room. Because the hostel is closed anyway, we've got quite a big space only for ourselves.

We miss riding our dear Sinn and Pomelo. They look great by the way, with their fluffy winter coat.

15/05/2020

Behind the scenes of the most romantic photo we've got on horseback...
Angi can't get on a horse and Sin's face is saying 'why the hell did I agree to all of that?'.

Do you have any romantic photos with your other half while riding? We'd be happy to see them in the comments!:)

11/05/2020

The quarantine got extended again, it's sure we're staying here til the end of May.

We honestly run out of ideas what to do in this time... It's especially hard for Angi who's a hyper-workaholic and not doing anything productive kills her soul. Mo is down to earth guy who enjoys life as it is thus he's happy with relaxing and playing games. Maybe you guys can recommend Angi some self development ideas?

We've been creative when it comes to cooking. Good food is the only thing keeping our spirits up.

With a heavy heart we took off horses shoes again, cursing the amount of wasted work and money. The grass is practically finished in the field where they are. As you can see in the pictures, all is left is horse poo everywhere.

06/05/2020

When Pomelo suddenly realised he can't see Sinn anymore...
Our two horses are inseparable!

01/05/2020

How do you feel when your hopes are being destroyed? When you had something promised and in the last moment it's taken away...

Today is the day when we were suppose to leave Barreal. After two months of being stuck here.

We got a certificate from Polish Embassy allowing us to travel. Just 300km up north, a little bit further away from the mountains. I must say big thanks to Polish Embassy, as they were very quick in their help and very understanding of our unusual situation. They included also Mo in the certificate, when French embassy refused any help. They said unless we're catching flight back to Europe, they won't give any permission.
We checked with local police if this certificate will be enough for us to leave. We had couple of phone conversations with them. Police said that they can't give permission to foreigners, only to Argentinians, so it's up to our embassies.
But we read how many problems people have out there, when they travel to catch a plane home, even with their embassy permission. We wanted to be sure it's gonna be okay, so we went to police station yesterday.

First they sent us to the hospital to get a health certificate. In the hospital they wouldn't give us such a thing as we're not registered here and how will they know we've been here for two months. Back at the police station then, where we waited long time as they needed permission from someone higher to authorize our travel. Finally there's certificate from the police ready, we got it, we can go... It had Mo's name spelled wrong, quite visible mistake as in the beginning was letter N not M. So they took it back to change it. In the meantime someone else came, higher in rank and said that absolutely we cannot travel. And that's it. We can't go and if we don't obey quarantine we'll be put in jail.

Vehicle is packed, horses were shoed the day before, we got rid of the remaining hay. Winter is coming soon and once the snow falls, there won't be any food for the horses.
For now the quarantine is extended until 10th of May. And I doubt it's gonna finish then.

On a bright side, our hosts are very understanding, so at least we still have a place to stay.
Horses have made new friends out in the field and enjoy their freedom.

28/04/2020

How we shipped our motorhome from UK to Argentina.
Step by step guide for those who consider whether it's worth to go through so much trouble.

English:
https://www.toursinexpeditions.com/shipping-your-campervan-motorhome-to-south-america-argentina/

Polish:
https://www.toursinexpeditions.com/wysylka-auta-statkiem-do-ameryki-poludniowej-argentyny/

Shipping a car from one continent to the other […]

27/04/2020

Need a list of all tour operators from English speaking countries.
Document must be in word or xcel format with following table heads

Country
Type of tour/experience
Owner's name
Business name
Email

Payment is based on per line (1 cent to 5 cents).
Higher the number of lines, quality and non repeated lines gains more payment per line.

Future projects involve making lists of Spanish speaking countries, French speaking countries and other languages. So as to make a list of all tour operators in the world.

24/04/2020

Help people even if you know they can't help you back.

https://youtu.be/l03TRQ7nNr0

We've made this video to help 6 months old Hania from Poland, who was diagnosed with the most severe form of SMA (spinal muscular atrophy) - fatal and very brutal. Her muscles weaken and disappear every day. There's a gene therapy in USA which can help, but it only costs about 2 mln USD... Her parents desperately are trying to gather that money, but they can't do it alone.

Description in the video of how you can help.

21/04/2020

So, what has been going on here with us in Argentina?

Quarantine extended again, now until 3 of may. We spoke to the police to see if we can get a permission to travel just within San Juan province. They said we need first to get permission from our embassies. French embassy said that unless we need to travel to catch a plane back to Europe they wouldn't give permission. Polish embassy haven't given us answer yet. We would like to be able to at least go to San Juan to do shopping and cash out, as here in Barreal everything is expensive and we're short on cash.

Our host managed to get permission to go to San Juan for one day, to drive his grandson back to his mother. Now, Iyan and Ingis don't have a friend to play with anymore and they start showing signs of boredom. It's easier to manage kids while we're traveling as with constant change of environment, they're always curious to explore. We've been more than a month in a single place, kids know everything here and start being naughty.
Just when we got another 20 bales of hay delivered, we found a grass paddock to rent where we can leave our horses. We decided to move horses there, so they can freely graze.

We've also been learning how to make a homemade empanadas and trying to make variety of food, which normally while traveling we don't have time to cook.

Going shopping is still quite a challenge. The main supermarket in Barreal has a really confusing system... There's a queue to enter supermarket and once you're inside, you realize to get vegetables or meat you have to go outside and ask for it over the window. So you leave your shopping basket inside and go out. Of course there's another long queue to vegetables window where you ask what you want and then another long queue to pick up those prepared vegetables. And then you wait again to enter back the supermarket to pay and get the rest of the shopping. Since yesterday also everyone has to wear face mask, they won't let you inside the shop without it.

So, that's how life goes on here in Argentina for now.