Dave and Sarah

So, within 24 hours of standing in the cold, looking at a massive glacier in Patagonia, we were dragging our backpacks through Rosario, 2000 kilometres and 30 odd degrees centigrade away. It was the biggest city we'd been to since Santiago and we liked it. We stayed 3 nights in a hostel with a balcony (so that Sarah could be nosey). The heat was almost unbearable but there were plenty of heladerias selling ice cream and loads of good bars selling cold beers. The city is famous amongst other things for being the birthplace of Che Guevara and a great football rivalry between Rosario Central and Newell's Old Boys. On the second night we were there, there was a huge rally of thousands of people commemorating the 33rd anniversary of the 1976 military coup in Argentina. ... read more

So, after our cross-continental detour, we got to Puerto Natales last Tuesday afternoon. This was the furthest south we were due to go in the whole trip. We liked it straight away and found a really nice residencial about 5-10 minutes walk from the centre with the best hot shower we´ve had so far and breakfast included. We went out on the first night and treated ourselves to lomo a lo pobre which is fillet steak, chips, fried onions and two fried eggs. We´d had it a couple of times in Chile before but this was the best yet, we´d read and heard about Patagonian beef being good but it was even better than expected. The second day was spent rushing around Puerto Natales buying everything we needed for the 7 day trek that we planned ... read more

After a couple of days in Puerto Tranquilo we got the bus a couple of hours south to Puerto Bertrand which was somehow even smaller than Tranquilo. There were less than 20 houses, 2 tiny shops and more stray dogs per capita than any village on Earth. It lies on the shore of a small lake called Lago Plomo which has beautiful clear, turquoise water and is the start of the Rio Baker, one of the largest rivers in Chile. We found a house that allowed camping in the garden and put the tent up under the watchful eye of a tiny kitten whose name was Nicole. It was pure white and had one green eye and one blue so naturally, we renamed it Bowie. Bowie took an immediate like/dislike of Sarah´s hair and started to ... read more

The original plan for the island of Chiloe was to spend 2-3 days there before getting a ferry from Castro to Chaiten on Wednesday morning. When we got to Castro we found out that the ferry didn´t leave from Castro but from Quellon and not on Wednesday, but on Friday. So we hung around a couple of days only to find the ferry cancelled. This led to a pretty drastic rethink of the route we had to take! We took a bus 2 hours back to Castro and managed to get our ferry refund without too much bother, then another bus, ferry crossing, a traffic jam and 6 hours later we got back to Puerto Montt where we decided to spend the night again. On this bus, we bought a paper and read about the reason ... read more

Well, we managed to survive the volcano anyway. We were up at half 5 on Saturday morning to get to the tour office at half 6. They gave us a backpack that Edmund Hillary would be proud of. Crampons, hat, helmet, sun glasses, massive glove mitten things, wind and waterproof trousers and jacket, ice pick and a tie-on blanket/sledge thing. We were driven up to the ski lift and given the option of taking the lift or walking an hour up to where the lift ended. Sarah was determined to do the whole lot, so we walked. The first hour wasn´t too bad and we met up with the others who had taken the lift. The next couple of hours gradually became more difficult, and then we got to where the ice and snow started...... We ... read more