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Published: March 25th 2008
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Santiago
Old Reflected in New. Or as Andy puts it, ´Laura´s arty farty photo´. Santiago marked the start of our mainland South American leg. After our airport pick-up failed to show we grabbed a taxi and headed off in search of our hostel. After stopping at a number of places that clearly were not our hostel, the taxi driver eventually swallowed his pride and we were guided in by passers by. We spent a couple of days exploring Santiago, mostly trying to avoid getting stuck behind the locals, who walk at a pace similar to that of the changing seasons, before booking ourselves on an 11 hour bus ride to Pucon in the Chilean lake district.
Pucon sits under an active volcano, and a traffic light system at the tourist info lets you know how ´active´it currently is. Thankfully for our time there the lights remained green, and we didn´t have to run for our lives. There we met Laura´s friend from school, Russell, and his girlfriend Kirsty. Unwittingly, we had chosen to stay at the hostel next door to the one they were staying in so we tracked them down pretty quickly and headed out for a great evening of food and beer. A pretty fit looking Russ declared that climbing the volcano
Santiago
View from our balcony. was probably only the hardest thing he´d ever done, so we limited our adventure activities in Pucon to legging it across the scolding hot black gravel beach and going for a swim in the f-f-f-freezing lake.
The next stop was Puerto Montt where the only worthy thing to note happened as we were leaving. Whilst trudging to the bus station bent double with our backpacks a Chilean man approached us with a camera. Thinking he was awfully rude to ask us to take a picture of him and his family when we clearly had no free hands, and were sweating profusely, it turned out he wanted his wife to take a picture of him
with us. Somewhere in the world there is a picture of us looking rather bewildered.
Another long bus ride took us into Argentina and the pretty town of San Carlos De Bariloche. The setting of the town is so much like the Swiss Alps (only with alot more monkey puzzle trees) that the locals have invested in St Bernards complete with brandy barrells, for tourists to have their photo taken with! We went on a hike into the hills here, which culminated at a
Santiago
Castillo in the centre of Santiago. beautifully serene lake full of chunks of ice at the foot of a glacier.
Next up was El Calafate. Having coughed up the cash to save ourselves from the hell of 30 hours of bus journey, and fly there instead, boy was it worth it. We flew alongside the snow capped peaks of the Andes interspersed with turquoise blue lakes for the whole journey. As we neared our destination the pilot turned the opposite direction and performed a fly-by of the Moreno Glacier before landing to raptuous applause from the passengers. We really really kicked ourselves for not having a camera with us as words cannot describe how amazing the huge expanse of white and blue tinged ice of the few advancing icefields looked from above....we thought we might like Patagonia.
The next morning we headed off on our first trip. Seconds after the catamaran left port and began to sail up Lago Argentino we got very excited as a blue iceberg slowly floated past. As we got nearer to the glaciers the icebergs got bigger and more frequent, until they towered above the boat. We sailed along the faces of the Upsala and Spegnazzi Glaciers staying far
Pucon (Chi)
Volcan Villarica towering above the town. enough away so as not to be smacked by the huge wave that would occur should a chunk fall off.
Our next ice related trip was to the hugely impressive 250km2 Perito Moreno Glacier whose face is 5km wide, has a height of 60m, and comes from the Patagonian icefield which is the 3rd largest mass of ice behind Antarctica and Greenland. Having waited with camera poised at the face for a couple of hours, listening to the glacier crack and boom, we were fortunate to witness an enormous wall of ice fall off the face with a tremendous thunderous roar. A short boat ride and walk afterwards and we were at the edge of the glacier preparing for our ice trek. We donned our crampons (surprisingly they even had some to fit Andy´s clown feet), and after a quick lesson on how to walk in them without maiming yourself, we were off. Stopping only for the guides to cut steps with their pick axes, we walked for a couple of hours, amazed at the beauty of being surrounded entirely by ice. At the end we were treated to a glass of whisky poured over freshly hacked glacier ice,
Pucon (Chi)
Kirsty and Russ. and an alfajor (our new favourite chocolatey snack).
Our next bus journey was surprisingly enjoyable as, despite being largely on an unpaved road, we got to spot hares, ostriches and flamingoes out of the window. No we haven´t lost the plot - they do apparently have ostriches, albeit ever so slightly smaller ones, and flamingoes in Argentina! Again we crossed the border, this time back into Chile, admiring on the way their nice big sign stating ´Los Malvenas Son Argentinas´ (The Falklands Are Argentinas)......alrighty then.
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