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Published: March 18th 2007
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Ushuia
Fin del Mundo, the end of the world, and it certainly feels like it. Arriving for the first time in Chile, certainly wont be the last with all of the criss-crossing across the border needed on such a long, skinny country. A beautful place surrounded by bays and mountain views. Spent the days hiking and the nights singing around the campfire with a group of travelling South American circus folk. The next campsite was in a ghost town just to the north. Our tour guide told us a story about how a ship had sunk and all the people had swum ashore and were knocking on the doors of the houses but no one could hear them over the roar of the wind. So all of the people froze to death and were found the next day outside their houses. Everyone thought the town was cursed so they left. You could definitely feel the ghosts around but I still slept like a log inside my tent.
Torres del Paine
Bought a tent, camp stove, enough food to feed an army and set off with Joe and Owain into the most spectacular scenery in South America, the "W" walk of Torres del Paine. Spent the next 3 days hiking up and down mountains, drinking water out of streams, trying to boil water in the wind on our teeny tiny stove, eating chocolate biscuits, trying to keep warm, which wasn't too difficult with three of us sleeping in a two man tent (the cheapest tent we could find) and generally just having a great experience in this amazing place. Met up with some people from our tour on our last night and found out that someone had died the night before because a tree had fallen on his tent at the Grey Glacier campsite. Luckily we had decided not to stay at that campsite coz we were too lazy to carry all of our gear there.
Bariloche
Had a lot of Spanglish problems in Bariloche, a European looking tourist town. Arrived on the eve of my birthday and decided to celebrate by going out for dinner to a "local" eatery (read - cheap). We walked into the restuarant and, like in a movie, everyone stopped what they were doing and turned and stared at us. We ordered our meals in what we thought was brilliant Spanish. Obviously the waiter didn't think so and went to every table in the restuarant to find someone who could speak English to translate for us. The next day while out for lunch, I ordered myself a bowl of crisps, instead of the lovely omelette and fries that I thought I'd asked for. Then caught a bus that we thought was going to our campsite but wound up on a lovely tour of the burbs of Bariloche. I guess not all of the tourists get to see what we did. Got off the bus eventually and tried to ask someone in a bakery what something was and he just gave it to me for free. Then got myself some "Bimbo" cake from the supermarket. You just have to really.
Pucon
Pucon - the home of delicious icecream, El-tit Supermercados and chairlifts without safety bars. Signed myself up for a climb up the very active Villarrica Volcano. As it was quite a cloudy day you couldn't actually see how big it was, thus began my first experience with altitude. It began well with a chairlift ride partway up the volcano that was nice and relaxing, and with no safety bar a little exciting too. Now climbing steep slopes has never been a strength of mine but nothing could prepare me for debilitating effects of the altitude. As we climbed higher and higher, and as everyone else, unaffected by the altitude, gradually overtook me, I gasped for air more and more, until finally as I was the last person in the group the guide just started pulling me up the side of the volcano. Hours later, and delirious from the exertion we arrived at the top, marvelled at the red glow from the lava on the surrounding snow, breathed in the fresh sulfur air and admired the view through the clouds that had parted allowing us to see just how high we had climbed. The slide down on our bums though the snow chutes using our ice-picks as brakes was the highlight of the trip, making the struggle all worthwhile. So was the soak in the rustic hotsprings that evening.
Santiago
Off to the big smoke, the last destination on our 7 week tour. Partied at some pretty average, but quite expensive bars and restuarants. Managed to find ourselves a much cheaper local salsa bar, realising later on in the night that we were actually at someones private party. No one seemed to mind and they even played us some much appreciated MC Hammer to make us feel welcome. By the time we left in the morning we were flat broke and couldn't afford a taxi home, so we got on a bus that seemed to be going in the general direction of our hostel. Quite luckily it took us practically to our doorstep.
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