I left you with me getting a lift at 8pm from Rio Tranquilo, and I promised adventure. I hope what follows will live upto your expectations. The first section of the journey was devoid of adventure, but full of amazing views. As we'd made such a late start, we got to see the sun setting over the lake, which was really something. Signs of the downpour last night were definitely evident though, as a couple of times we had to slow down, as the road had turned into a river. The slow progress meant we arrived at Puerto Guadal, just past [View Full Entry]

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An interesting thing happened as the bus pulled up in Cerro Castillo. Carl, an English guy I'd first met in Futaleufu, then again in Puyuhuapi, got off to stretch his legs. Nothing too strange there you might think, you bump into the same people all the time when you're on the road. Except in this case, Carl had been cycling the Carretera Austral. So what the hell was he doing on a bus, and where was his bike? Turned out he'd managed to break it, so it was now lying back in Coyhaique, waiting to be fixed. Other people have bad [View Full Entry]

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So, my bus from Coyhaique dropped me in Villa Cerro Castillo, and after dumping all my unwanted gear at the tourist office, I hit the road to start my hike. I say hit the road, because the trailhead is 25km outside of town, so I needed to hitchhike there. However, an hour later, nothing had happened, and it was now 2pm. I was very aware that it was starting to get a bit late being as I had 17km of walking ahead of me, so I looked for other options. It turned out you could walk up to what is marked [View Full Entry]

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I've been having some pretty good luck of late. From getting good weather at viewpoints, to getting a free lift from Puyuhuapi to Coyhaique, everything had been going well. In Coyhaique, I was just going to look for a campsite when I was approached by 2 girls, who had a room going spare for the same price as a camping. And when I got there they had some amazing leftover salmon, which I was welcome to scoff. I thought that nothing could possibly go wrong for me. Then came Friday 13th. It started badly, when I woke up to find a [View Full Entry]

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As the bus wound down the Carretera Austral from Chaiten towards Puyuhuapi, we were passing glaciers on our left one minute, crystal clear waters on our right the next, with the odd towering mountain chucked in just for good measure. It was all too good to be true, and 50km outside of Puyuhuapi, it started to rain. Really rain. Arriving in town, the rain had let up, but the sky was still threatening more, so I was more than pleased when the tourist office recommended me a camping which was under a roof. Perfect. I set up camp, had a lovely [View Full Entry]

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First of all, I need to start this entry with an admission. I went to Chaiten purely as a voyeur, planning on taking a view photos of the town, then leaving. For those of you that don't know the history, Chaiten was a busy port village until May 2008, when the nearby Volcano Chaiten erupted. This caused the river to overflow, and the town was devestated. Thankfully, everyone got out alive. Now, despite government warnings, 200 of the 7,000 residents have returned to try and get on with their lives. Anyway, I got off the bus at the dock, and set [View Full Entry]

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Futaeufu is one of those places. Now I have it on a screen on front of me it's fine, but in my daily diary entries, that sneaky extra u before the second f had a nasty habit of going missing. I spent three days in Futa, which was a little bit more than I'd intended. However, my next destination was Chaiten, and as I'd heard on the grapevine that traffic in and out of the town was pretty much non-existent due to the volcano, I decided not to chance it with my thumb, and wait for the bus. Therefore, I had [View Full Entry]

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So I headed south from my life of luxury in Mallin, and ended up in the city of Esquel, which was one of the places that the Welsh colonised when they wandered over this way all those years back. However, the tourist office told me there was no evidence of the Welsh here, I'd have to go to nearby Trevelin for that. For the time being however, I found myself a campsite, and just as I was beginning to think I was rather peckish, some Argentines said they had far too much steak, and would I like to have some? I [View Full Entry]

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A strange title for a blog entry you might think. Especially when I tell you that 5 of my 8 days in El Bolson were spent walking in the foothills of the Andes. But personally, I think it's the perfect title, and soon you will too. I knew that Murray and Joyce, friends of my parents from yesteryear, lived around Bolson, and after a bit of effort, I had managed to get in touch with them. So after a couple of days camping in Bolson itself, Murray came to pick me up, and we sped back to Mallin Ahoghado on his [View Full Entry]

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Hah! You didn't think I was serious when I said steak was off the menu did you? With a blog title relying on it, and also needing to provide Chris with his first Argentinian steak, all we were waiting for was a place to cook it, and luckily our campsite in Bariloche provided that. I mentioned in the last entry that Villa la Angostura felt touristy, but mostly Argentinians. Multiply the number of tourists by about 100, and make them gringos, and you get an idea what Bariloche is like. To be honest, I wasn't overly taken by the city itself, [View Full Entry]

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