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Published: December 1st 2011
Day 49 - Monday 28th November
Both had a bit of a rough night due to that Chinese meal last night (should have known better), but in a better frame of mind I think it is hard to go from having so much happening to nothing. Slow start to the day and we weren’t out the door till 11, which was bad of us when we initially had things to do. First on the agenda was getting money from the bank followed by chasing up some bus tickets out of town. We are planning on moving onto Puerto Montt in Chile on Wednesday and the woman and a travel agent yesterday said we could only get them from the bus terminal located 3km out of town. Before jumping in a taxi we decided to walk down the main drag and see if anywhere else may have sold them and sure enough discovered a ticket office a block from the hotel.
Got our Wednesday escape tickets for 100 pesos ($25) each which isn’t bad for a 6 hour bus trip across a border. We then booked a tour out to a nearby mountain and glacier for tomorrow. We thought about trying to
do the whole thing by public transport but the tour looked pretty good and had plenty of stops at other sights and was a full day tour, so we opted to take it. Looked into another tour to a nearby cave for today but for that one we needed to take a public bus out there and you then had to go on a guided tour through the cave and it was only in Spanish. The guy we spoke to about it had limited English so it was hard working out the finer details so in the end we decided to give it a miss.
It was a beautiful sunny although still cold day and because it was Monday the shops were now all open so it was a good time to look around and do some proper shopping. Walked the main drag from East to West and back again but didn’t see a great deal to buy. Tried to pick up some T shirts as I need a couple more but no one had anything I wanted in my size. Once again as it hit 1pm all the shops started closing up and we took this as a sign
to get a bite to eat. Passed a pastry/café that had the very novel idea of giving everyone that bought a 50 peso lunch a free massage. What made this whole idea stranger was that the massage chair was sitting out the front of the café on the corner. The large female masseur/waitress puffing away on a cigarette only added to the appeal, so I just don’t know why we didn’t take up the offer?
Ended up back at the small bar we had dinner at on the night we arrived where we had a small burger and a beer. With chocolate shops being the only places open we decided to take a break back at the hotel before heading out again later.
For dinner we wandered around aimlessly trying to find somewhere that had reasonable prices and wasn’t too much of a tourist trap. Eventually settled on a place that was a little overpriced but the food wasn’t too bad. As we have walked around town over the last few days we have noticed a lot of empty shops, and we started to get the feeling that because of the ash, things haven’t been going too well in town.
Tomorrow we would find out just how bad things are.
Day 50 - Tuesday 29th November
Up bright and early for our tour into the mountains. Our pickup was at 7.30 but we were up heaps earlier so we could get ready, have breakfast and also to see if we could locate a shop open where we could pick up some lunch for ourselves. Had seen a few bakeries in town selling ham and cheese rolls yesterday and thought/hoped that like Australia they would be open bright and early baking the daily bread…wrong. Raced around a few city blocks to the bakers we had spotted earlier and they were all closed. At this point we thought we would have to just go hungry for lunch, but fortunately we would get a feed.
After all the running around we still made it back to the hotel and were ready by 8.00. We had been worried about doing this tour because we were told we would be travelling by Van and not bus, and because of Shelley’s claustrophobia we are always worried that we could be jammed up the back of the bus. To our surprise, not only were we the
first to the van but only 4 more passengers got on. The van would normally carry 21 people but today there would only be 6 of us. Our driver was Daniel and our guide for today was Rahul and thankfully he spoke good English. He explained how bad the tour industry for Bariloche has been over the last season, and how normally the bus would be full. He said lots of people are leaving the town due to lack of work and shops are constantly closing, and that very morning he discovered that a tour company had closed and a long running convenience store is about to close. This is all the result of the Puyehue volcano covering the area in ash, and the fear people have of further eruptions. Other than the town being dusty and the outlook hazy there really isn’t any reason for people not to be here. We had noticed the number of empty shops and the fact that half of the restaurants recommended in the Lonely Planet didn’t even exist, so yes the town is in dire straits.
Rahul was a great guide and despite him having to speak Spanish to the other 4 passengers
he always sat and repeated the information to us in English. As we drove out to our first stop today he gave us heaps of time explaining not only the problems in Bariloche but also about the local fauna and flora. The guy was really informative and would easily say the best guide we have ever had. After driving along the bitumen road out of town for an hour we turned onto a dirt road and then had to stop to pay for the park entrance, 50 pesos each. We took off again and drove through beautiful pine forests alongside an incredible crystal clear lake, and stopped often for photos.
The first big stop was Cascada Los Alerces which is a waterfall, Rahul pointed out that it is not quite as big as Iguazu with a laugh. It may be small but the area and falls are beautiful. Where the bus park was a cafeteria run by a 96 year old Mapuche (indigenous) woman and her Family, the speciality is torta fritas. Basically these are fried pastry pillows, so we brought a few and they were nice and then hopped back on the bus.
Next stop was Pampa Linda for
lunch and a very ordinary ham and Cheese toasted sandwich, but with the most amazing view of Monte Tronador which is the large mountain that the border runs through with one side being Chile and our side Argentina. We are so lucky the day is crystal clear with blue skies and no wind, apparently the best day since the eruption of the volcano. The road to this area is so narrow but the traffic is only allowed one way till 2pm for the traffic to go up and at 4.00pm the road opens the opposite direction so you can return to town.
About 2.15 we were back on the road to Ventisquero Negro (Black Glacier), on the road there we saw areas that had been affected by a natural earthen dam that collapsed and roared through with boulders and trees. This happened three years ago at 3am and destroyed the road and flooded the area leaving mud a metre high in Pampa Linda’s cafeteria making this whole area inaccessible for 7 months. Everyone was very lucky that it did not happen at 3pm as the road would have been full of tourist buses. We arrived to an area close to
the black glacier and saw about a dozen mini buses parked, from here we had to walk as the bridge across the river had been torn down the day before to be rebuilt. It is only a short walk uphill to the black glacier it is really a dark brown colour which is caused by the rock, debris and ash but from a distance it looks black. Unfortunately it is receding quite rapidly and probably will not be there in another 60 years. There were a lot of tourists here so it was hard to find a peaceful spot to sit and watch the glacier and listen for the cracking of the ice. Today the glacier was quiet and there was no major ice falls. The glacier runs down the side of Monte Tronador, which translates as mount thunder. The glaciers and the ice shelf on top are constantly cracking and tumbling, which thunders down the valley.
We arrived back at Pampa Linda just on 4pm to join the queue forming to head back to town on the single lane dirt road. We were dropped back in town at 6pm and did some shopping for supplies and the big decision
where to have dinner unfortunately the food in town is very ordinary and very expensive. So just had a snack at the bar near to the hotel where everyone is very friendly and tried to decide where we were going to spend the next night. We have no idea where to go as by all accounts Puerto Montt is not very inspiring. Back at the hotel we paid the bill and got a 10% discount for cash making this a cheap hotel only $45 a night.
Day 51 - Wednesday 30th November
The bus is at 7.30am so no breakfast this morning as this is the time it starts, just finished packing our bags and headed out the door to the corner where there is a taxi stand. Every time we passed here it was full of taxis, but not this morning. We waited about 10 minutes then went back to the hotel and they called one for us, and soon we were at the bus terminal. Our seats on the bus were upstairs the two very front ones so we had the enormous front window and side ones it was very strange at first but gave us the
best views. The scenery was amazing leading up to the border we passed through Villa La Angostura this town was very badly affected by the ash and beside the road were large mounds of ash from the town. These mounds at first glance were the only sign of what had happened as the town had been cleaned up pretty well, but I am sure if you looked closer the ash dust would be continually covering everything. In the distance you could see Puyehue Volcano still with an ash spewing out, so the problem is still on going. We travelled within about 15km of the volcano and the closer we got all the trees were dead and the surrounding mountains and lakes were covered in ash.
We arrived at the Argentinian border to exit again and then drove about 40km to the Chilean border to be stamped in and the usual bag checks. We are now back into Chile and still did not know where we were heading one idea is to get off the bus in Osorno if it stopped there and get a connection to Valdivia or to go onto Puerto Montt and then Chiloe or Puerto Varas. Decisions,
decisions and time is running out, we need to decide where we are sleeping night. We decided against the Osorno choice as we are not sure about connections, but while stopped there saw that it was possible. So onto Puerto Montt and we have decided Chiloe if we can get a connecting bus. We arrived at Puerto Montt about 2.20pm and saw a bus loading up to Chiloe, but we could not buy tickets in time for this one, not to worry the next one was 3.40pm.
The bus to Chiloe involved a half hour ferry ride and the sea was a bit choppy so I was glad to get off the bus and get the fresh air. We arrived on the island of Chiloe which is Chile’s second largest and the bus headed to Castro the town we had decided to stay at on this morning journey. Castro has a population of 35,000 and is a bustling little town, around the bus station it is busy and we have to push our way through the crowds with our backpacks on. We head off to the first hotel on the list to see if they have any rooms available and
the price, luckily it is reasonable and there are vacancies. So we get settled and then hit the town and tonight there is a big game between Chile and Brazil so everywhere is full. We find a Cafe with a spare table and watch the beginning of the game, but decide not to eat here as it is so smoky. People are allowed to smoke in the Cafés in Chile, so with it being so crowd it was a bit unpleasant, so we moved onto another restaurant for dinner.
Day 52 - Thursday 1st December
Breakfast is always a surprise on the first day of a new hotel you are never sure what will be on offer and today’s is bread rolls, cheese and what I thought at first was dodgy looking ham but was devon. On our walk around town our first stop was a shop to buy water and here I saw what I thought was a salad bar so I walked over and there was a large tray with what looked like chunky diced devon/sausage, egg, olives etc. Later we saw someone in a café eating a plate with chips and chopped up hot dog with
toothpicks in the hot dog pieces – interesting.
We walked around the town square and saw the Iglesia San Francisco De Castro the large wooded and corrugated iron church built in 1912. The church is massive for an all timber structure and the interior has such a beautiful earthy feel when compared to so many gold encrusted European churches. We then walked to see the palafitos the shingled houses built on stilts along the estuaries we find the lookout that has the best view of them. It is low tide so there are boats sitting in the mud in front of the houses. Then it is onto the port area to see the fishing boats and back into town which concluded our tour of the town at 1.00pm. We went to a café for lunch and the interesting food continued the hamburgers had sauerkraut and we discovered that the devon, egg, olives dish was on the menu so it may be a sort of speciality for the area.
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traudy
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mother nature.
Seems alittle terrifing to be so close to an active volcano? Surely couldnt be to good for the lungs, let alone business. Glad you opted for some fresh air. Great blog write up as usual. Scotty hows the hair? ur overdue! Hmm... wonder what the barbers are like in Valdivia? Shelley your still good hahaha.... counting down the days now 10 to go. Its great travelling with you both, xx