Santiago naar Paso San Fransisco

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Ciudade de Santiago bamos a Paso San Fransisco. Our Spanish is improving by the day now. We are able to talk in depth to any mechanic about the needs of our car. To be honest we still use our hands and feet a lot when communicating with the locals. In Santiago we visited the statue of the virgin Mary on top of the hill, she is overlooking the city. It was a wonderful experience to be there at sunset. We saw the sun set behind the mountains and the lights of the city switched on. The city became purple and the sky was pink. We had a nice sushi dinner in town, were we became greedy and ordered to much to eat it all. We went to an Inca museum were we saw many pots and pans that the Inca people had made hundreds of years ago. In the museum it was not mentioned that the Inca’s also inhabited North Argentina. This is probably because the Argentineans say that the Chileans can not drive. There is a healthy competition between the two neighbours!
From Santiago we drove to Valparaiso, it is supposed to be the party town of Chile. We did not noticed it, we only saw more dogs laying around in the street then elsewhere. They must like the beach life. The old town was very nice, it is situated on an elevated part of town. It is accessible with a funicular, there are several in town. We had lunch there and on the way we bought a painting from some art students.
In the afternoon we drove to a picturesque village at the sea, so they said…. We arrived at sunset and at first it was a beautiful scenery to see the fisherman standing together by their boats drinking and talking about today’s catch. But then our noses began to work and our eyes registered the source of the sweet and sticky smell that tickled our noses. More dogs!!! The town was invaded by the four legged friends. There were not only many dogs but also a lot of cats. The town, the houses, the pousada’s, the internet café, it all smelt like a big dog and cat toilet. Everywhere there was dogshit. We left the next day, amazed that people are actually able to live here, how did this animal love got out of hand so much!
The next days we visited a microclimate area at the coast, national park Fray George. The area is surrounded by desert, but because of the high mountains at the coast there is a lot of rainfall on the east side of the mountain. The forest is covered with moss. On the other side there was a very strong wind that almost blew the door out of the car when Jura opened it. We slept in a typical Andean mountain village with a huge wooden church. There were many observatories in the area where you could gaze at the stars. On the way to the north we drove to the flower desert, in some years the whole desert is covered with flowers. But not this year. We got of the highway and drove to the ocean. There was only a single track and we really had to navigate around with our compass. We drove for 2 hours through sandy tracks, our 4x4 had a good time. We arrived at the ocean in the dark, we looked for a good spot and slept there in the car. But only after Jura prepared a fabulous meal with good wine and a beagle on the laptop.
The paso de San Fransisco is the highest pass between Chile and Argentina, 4750 m. On the way the car had a hard time because we took the difficult road in to the national park Tress Crutches. We camped in a gorge along the way, with a campfire and as always good food and wine. There were hardly any people, we saw one car a day and two gauchos! The car got overheated many times and we had to stop to let it cool down a bit and refill water. At the end of the day we ran out of water, but very luckily as we turned on to a bigger road there was this water truck passing by with 10.000 litre of water! We asked if he could spare some. Besides giving us water the guy said let’s have a look at your car. After some inspections he unscrewed the thermostat housing and put in a new liquid gasket and he told us that our waterpump was broken….. Ok, the nearest town is 200 km to the east on a gravel road and an other one 350 km to the west. We started driving downhill in the dark to the east, because it is cold and the engine won’t get so hot. After 20 km we thought the car did not do so bad, so we turned around to the border. We only had enough gasoline for 450 km and there was no gas station. We decided to spend the night at the border and make a plan. We slept in the car with three sleeping bags at an altitude of 3800 m, we started the car three times during the night so the water would not freeze. It got -7 and the windows of the car where covered with ice. The next day we calculated that we could have a test drive of 50 km to check the cooling system and the water pump. After 50 km the car cooled very well and it seemed there was no problem at all anymore, so we drove on. We learned from this that the cooling system of a car has to be vacuum and especially at high altitudes. We were so glad we did not drove back, but continued our journey. We saw beautiful mountain sceneries, the highest active volcano and the laguna Verde surrounded by volcanoes. We got out of the car and took a warm bath in the hot springs near the laguna. We also sat down in the freezing cold laguna, the water in the laguna contains a lot of salt so you float in it.
On the other side of the border to Argentina the road went down for 250 km, we did not use much gasoline here. The road was paved, clean and beautiful, it was good to be back in Argentina.

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Photos

Oceano pacifico
Haven van Valparaiso

Chili uit Chile
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