Ant Smee

Never in the annals of time had the Amigos had such a manly adventure. There was the issue of who had booked the best and worst hotel/lodge and a points scoring competition had developed . Amigo Miller had planned the first half of the trip and Amigo Smee had responded with the second half. While Tortel had brought the competition near level on all parts of the experience, the lodge in Tortel had pushed Miller into the lead unfortunately by quite a bit, all be it budgets were in excellent shape for the second leg, while Miller's part was in tatters! Smee had to get thinking and planning, time was running out, as was the Carretera Austral. While Miller was out on another horse ride with another Senorita, (strange that) his lead became not so sure. ... read more

The long and winding road, as the song goes, We have put three days worth of driving together in this report, with lots of photos to give you all a taste. The further we go South towards the tip of Chile the more deserted it becomes, no petrol stations, no people, just stunning views the occasional logging truck, car and animal in the road. There is no protection if you come of f the road and little chance being found, mobiles are a waste of time. When you hit a community it is usually 100 miles apart and is made up of 5 or 6 sheds. Weather turned cold, sunny, wet all in 5 mins and mountains have overnight snow. Car leaves a huge dust trail and it is impossible to follow another vehicle close you ... read more

Now starts the real adventure and why we came to Chile. THE CARRETERA AUSTRAL. Simon and I read the below in a book and we just looked at each other and said “Let’s drive it” “Travelling along the Carretera Austral is one of the greatest journeys South America has to offer. The Carretera is largely an unpaved, gravel, single track RIPIO road stretching almost 1200km through spectacular ever-changing scenery and with similar length of branch roads to the fjords or the Andes Mountains of Patagonia beyond. Before the opening of the road in1995 (it took 20 years to build) this part of deep southern Chile was inaccessible; it remains breathtaking. The journey will take you past trees growing out of vertical cliffs, impenetrably thick millennial forests and burned pastures dotted with glacial debris; innumerable waterfalls rushing ... read more

We are having a rest day so while Simon went for another horse ride I went to get dinner, tonight it was going to be fish! Not from the market but live from a river. Gonzalo picked me up and we set off, I thought we would be going a couple of miles down the road but as he chatted away about the bit of river he had just puchased having retired as a commercial pilot I began to consider this was no ordinary river. The roads got longer, hills turned to mountains, greenery became like jungle and 50 yes 50 miles later we were in Patagonia and so a real adventure started.... read more

The Amigos first stop is Casa Silva, a winery and hotel in one about 100 miles South of Santiago. It really feels like we are in Spain kind of how NZ is to England. Even the hills mountains look like Mijas, same language just a slightly softer Spanish way. Shops are branded with Spanish names and banks ,people are well covered as Simon put it, yes Chile feels in good health. Wanted to have a chill out day today and thats exactly what we managed to achieve with sitting around, trying the yummy Chilian wines, go on a bycle and Simon even managed to go horse riding. I flew across nine time zones and arrived before I left as crossed the date line so all a bit muddled with my days and timing still. ... read more