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Published: January 28th 2006
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Had a lovely 2 days in the Chilean resort of La Serena - campsite approx 100m from beach :-) Nightlife quite lively there, including a club called Kamikaze - sounds like it is probably a good thing I didnt actually make it there in the end, due to it being very expensive and me having no ID on me. They asked every single person for ID, even those in their 40s! Funny. Instead we went to another bar where they had karaoke and myself and Urvi gave a fine rendition of Dancing Queen - well we thought so anyway. Turned out it was a competition (we had no idea!) and another girl in the group (Kate) won, based on the rest of us clapping really loudly when her name was called out! Not the biggest prize in the world tho, just 2 pisco sours, but not bad for a quick song!!
Next day was a lazy one but had an oragnised trip to a local observatory in the evening - there are 3 in this area due to the location way out in the desert. Very interesting stuff, got to look through various telescopes then the guide pointed out constellations
with a laser pointer. He then showed us a program called starry night (a trial version can be downloaded from starrynight.com so the guide told us!) which show the stars that can be seen from any location in the world after you input where you are. It even shows you what the stars look like from other planets! The guide showed us the constallations first with just the stars, then filling in a picture of what we were supposed to imagine the shape was. This got particularly dubious when the constellation only consisted of 2 stars...
Off to Santiago next - bright lights big city!! Quite literally when you see the view from our hotel as we were right in the middle of things. After a quick wander around the main centre a few of us headed off to the races, theres a course not far from the city centre. It was free to get in (not like Newbury!) and a very friendly chap who was at the entrance quided us around once he realised we didnt have a clue where we were going! He even took us to the stable area and introduced us to the jockeys! I
had a couple of small bets but didnt win anything.
Next day was a slow start due to seeing off a few folk the night before who were leaving the tour in Santiago.... eventually made it out to one of the wineries just outside the city.. called Concha y Toro (literally sea-shell and bull), and the tour we had was fantastic. We got to hear all about the history of the place, including how the wine used to get stolen from the cellars by the locals until the owner decided to start a rumour that the devil lived there... so one of their best known labels is Castillo del Diablo (Devils Cellar) and we went in there to see if we could find him...! But just saw lots of very nice looking wine. Had 2 very nice tastings during the tour and got to keep the tasting glass we were using - no more wine out of plastic mugs when camping - hurrah! On the way back from the tour a couple of us went up Cerro de San Cristobel, a big hill with great views of the city and a big statue of the Virgin Mary which gets
lit up at night. Slightly rickety funicular ride up the hill but we made it...
Early start the next morning to get to Pucon, in the Chilean Lake District. Having travelled so far south now its a lot colder and stays light until about 9.30... quite disorientating as you think its early evening until you look at your watch. From Pucon we did a trek up the Villarrica volcano, an active volcano where we saw into the crater with views of the lava bubbling up! The most fun was getting down tho, as it involved sitting down and sliding down the mountain - king of like tobogganing without the tobogan! Pucon is centre for all sorts of outdoor activities, so the next day some of us went horseriding. Again, we had amazing views, including a view of the volcano we had trekked up the previous day, plus many lakes and mountains in the distance. It was all very peaceful, trekking through forests with just the snow-capped mountains surrounding us.
From Pucon we headed further south and back into Bariloche, which is kind of like a Swiss Apline village transplanted into South America - quite bizarre!! Great chocolate tho....
:-) The weather wasnt that great the day we were there, so again altho there is great outdoors stuff to do there, all I can say is that I went shopping..... mainly clothes but also managed to buy a flight from Ushuaia up to Buenos Aires to avoid a lot of long truck days and get some more time in BA.... but more of that later!
From Pucon we travelled further south to Perito Mereno, nothing much there, just a camping stopover. Next day was another long truck day to El Calafate, which is a lovely town, lots of little shops and bars along one main street, all right by a beautiful green lake. Whilst in El Calafate we had a day trip to the Moreno Glacier which is absolutely amazing, about 5 km across at the front and moves 2m forward each day but also loses about 2m each day so it stays roughly the same in the end. Absolutely amazing to see the ice breaking off and falling into the water, it is so high that it creates some quite serious waves!!
Into Torres del Paine national park next, middle of nowhere and to be honest
not that much fun to be camping for 4 nights. Great scenery again, but oh my god, the wind was like nothing I have ever experienced, at one point I was sat in the tent and half of the floor lifted up a good foot into the air!! On one of the walks we went on, we actually ended up going backwards for a good 10m along the road, I was just glad I didn´t get blown into the lake!!
On the way out of Torres del Paine we visited a penguin colony - I didn´t expect much from this but actually they came really close to us! Got a bit closer than intended when I dropped my camera behind the barrier and was convinced the nearest penguin was going to run off with it!! Luckily he just gave us a bit of a look and then allowed us to retreive the camera..
Further south tomorrow, will be at the end of the world soon!! (well as far as poss without going to Antartica anyway)
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