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Published: February 26th 2009
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Hello from Steph (chilling at a beach resort in Colombia, while writing this)
Sorry for the lack of blog over the last few weeks, but we've been too busy having a good time. Coral's written about Galapagos, but here's a brief catchup on some of the things we did before that.
Puerto Varas was a quiet little town on the shores of Lake Llanquihue, with the view over the lake dominated by Osorno volcano. It was nice to stay in a very comfortable hotel, although the town itself was a bit sleepy. We took a day trip from here to another town on the lake, called Frutillar, whose buildings reflected the German settlers of this area. We also watched Barrack Obama's inauguration on the big tv in our room with commentary courtesy of the BBC on the pc as we felt this was an important moment in history.
We took a bus and ferry down to the peninsular island of Chiloe which has always has been a little isolated from the mainland. The area has a number of old wooden churches, and wooden houses built on stilts over the water which are painted in bright colours, called Palafitos.
We stayed in Castro, the capital, overnight, and also took a bus/ferry out to Achao on one of the more remote islands, although there wasn't much here other than the 1730 church.
Returning to Puerto Varas in Chile, we then took a mammoth day trip across to Bariloche in Argentina. Called the 3 lakes crossing, it consisted of bus, catamaran, bus, small boat, bus, catamaran and bus, and took all day. Fortunately we had glorious weather, and this allowed us to appreciate the beautiful scenery and colours of the water in this area. It was a really good way to cross over to Bariloche, and we were really impressed that we didn't have to carry our own luggage between the various buses and boats!
We found Bariloche a shock because it was so developed and full of tourists. It obviously models itself on Switzerland, as there were several people touting photos with St Bernard dogs, and there were a huge number of chocolate shops. Coral was very restrained!. We met up with a couple of Steph's friends, Dan and Betty, and had a lovely meal with them. Bariloche is in an absolutely stunning area of lakes and mountains,
and we took a couple of day trips out to see more of the area, having a sandwich at Llao Llao, a very famous and exclusive hotel (not sure why they let us in), a chairlift to Cerro Campanario and taking the Seven Lakes route to San Martin de los Andes (although we changed our itinerary so we did not stay there)
From here we took our last overnight bus, travelling to Mendoza. Having booked this early, we had the coach equivalent of flat-beds, but we're not sad to finish overnight bus travel! We decided against the trips to vineyards, although Steph tried a couple of glasses in the name of research, and instead took a couple of trips out to the mountains. We visited the Puente del Inca, a natural bridge, thought to have been formed by the sulphur bearing hot springs in the area, the huge Cristo Redentor statue on the old route though to Chile, and had an entertaining day out at the thermal spa park at Cacheuta, on what was apparently the last day of the school holidays!
We took more or less the same route through the Andes on a trying all day
volcan osorno
view from lago todos los santos on three lakes crossing bus journey to cross back into Chile. Although we had bought tickets to Valparaiso, the bus driver was determined he was travelling to Vina del Mar. Fortunately there were some other passengers with tickets to Valparaiso, so the driver was eventually forced to take us the extra 10 minutes or so down the coast. Have to say this was the only border crossing where the bus drivers were not helpful to us poor gringos, although fortunately we had some idea of what was required, and there were several very helpful English speakers on the bus.
We stayed in a lovely hostel in Valparaiso, Casa Hostel 199, with gorgeous views over the bay, and spent a very enjoyable Sunday exploring the pretty town. From there we travelled to Santiago, and spent a few hours looking around the centre, although it is not a very interesting city. We did manage to locate a Starbucks here though!
We intended to fly from Santiago to Quito, but as we had to change planes in Lima, decided to spend 24 hours in the centre. The hotel (Maury) was a bit dire, but couldn't be faulted for its location just off the main plaza,
so was fine for one night. We managed to watch the changing of the guard at the Palacio de Gobernio, which was very jolly and the armed guards and riot police guarding the building were tapping their feet to the music, although we couldn't spot exactly who had changed.
So from there to Quito and the Galapagos...but that's for another blog!
Oh, and we loved watching the snow at home on the tv and internet .......
Steph and Coral
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Andrew & Susan
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Spooky coincidence
You two are sitting on the same sofa at the Llao Lao hotel that we sat on a year ago having a sandwich and thnking how did we get past the security! Glad to start seeing the blogs again. See you at the ceilidh.