Advertisement
Published: January 7th 2009
Welcome to Chile...
Cowboys on the roadShe shoved her tongue down her partners throat and was met with hers. Their arms interlocked, groping eacheather's bodies and driving them into a frenzy. Then they began playfighting, taunting eachother and passing out slaps. Two minutes later the whole process was repeated. They had been putting on this spectacle for all to see for the last few hours. The Argentinian border police were taking an unusually long siesta and the two girls, bored, dumb and British were merely acting out their childish fantasies. We had long since had enough. An immigration guy finally showed his face and the waiting crowd gave out a sigh of releif. We could get back on the bus and leave the girls to their antics out of sight at the back of the vehicle.
It was a fitting ending to three weeks of travel in amazing Chile. My information had been wrong. I had been relying on out of date info before going to South America. Chile, I had thought, was this sterile, expensive country with nothing much to see or do. Torres del Paine in the South drew in its fair share of visitors but the rest of the country, so they said,
There it looms...
The first glimpse of the Torres del Paine from the bus you could give a miss. They were wrong. Slowly I began to comprehend. I met the first Cile lovers in BA. They had gone there for a few days and stayed a few weeks. The people were great, prices were right and the landscape left one gasping in disbelief. Or so they said...
The bus crossed the border and descended down the mountain. Sudenly we came to a halt. Three real-life cowboys were driving a herd of cows across the road. The stuff of legend, the dreams of my childhood, they were real...welcome to Chile!
Desmond and I were hungry. I hadn't eaten in a day, Desmond two. We asked for the usual aka a cheap but good reastaurant (a conflict of terms, I know) and were pointed in the direction of a yellow building accross the street. La Picada de Pepito, Juan=Pepe=Pepito's inn. Take your pick. One look at the menu and I thought I got the exchange rate wrong. It couldn't be. Steaks were half the price of Argentina. A lomo with sidedish came to 5 EUR. For the next three weeks I was in lomo heaven.
The next morning I set off. Torres del
A little colour
The weather looked fine so I headed straight for these babies Paine, the towers of Paine, a mecca for climbers and treckers alike was drawing me like a magnet. The famous 'W' was what I was there to do. I hadn't really thought of where to start. I had left planning at home and was winging pretty much everthing since I had started my travels. All of a sudden the whole bus let out a gasp. People pulled out cameras and talked excitedly. In the distance between the clouds loomed the Torres. By the time we reached the first of the three park entrances, the sky had cleared and the Torres stood magnificent in the sun's light. My choice was made, I was going straight to Campamaneto Torres. Six hours later, two meals and five liters of sweat lighter, Joel and I reached the base camp. We left our gear there and climbed the last three hundred near vertical metres over the morraine. The top seemed to be eluding us. Every time we thought we had reached the viewpoint, another series of boulders awaited is. It was 8 pm. Normally this is when you need to start thinking of heading back before nightfall. In Patagonia, however, in the Summer the sun
Climber's paradise
The Torres (towers) does not set until 11 pm.
With plenty of light remaining, a surplus of drinking water and dwindling energy levels, we crossed the last of the boulders and were knocked off our feet. The wind over the ridge was quite fierce, but it was the view that did it.
The next day, while I was hiking in the lower areas of the national park, disaster struck. I had been pushing it. My backpack was seriously overweight and I was walking far too great distances. My fitness level amazed me and caused me to do some silly things such as run downhill and jump about from rock to rock when crossing streams. Soon after one such crossing my frivolous journey came to an end. Pain eminated from the area around my left knee sending shivers through my body and causing me to yell in anguish. The weakest link in my body, I rediscovered, were my knees.
But as is often the case, good comes with bad and here bad came with good. For the next two nights, as I hobbled my way to the nearest road, I met a multidude of great hikers offering me words of encouragement.
Bella vista
Waiting for the sun to illuminate them The suffering, though, was mine alone. I took it easy, covering a distance of only seven or eight kilometers a day until my knee, my mind and my nerves could stand no more. The last part of the famous 'W' treck remained unconquored but the experience was incredible.
After four days of pasta, salsa and rice, I needed a big juicy steak. Meeting up with a group of Aussies I had met trecking, we made it to La Picada de Pepito and I quickly forgot about the hardships of the past few days. Back at my hostel, the situation was not so rosy. A large group of backpackers had just checked in and the place was full. The kind owner called her friend just across the street to see if he had room and I ended up having my best hostel stay ever.
Willie Mena or Willie the King as we called him turned out to be the coolest hostel owner in history, hanging out with us, animating us with his guitar and one day taking us out with his friends on an overnight fishing expedition on the Serrano river. We didn't catch any fish, but standing in
Crazy clouds
Due to the topography, the swirling winds created some unusual cloud formations waders in ice cold water up to my waste casting my line with the Cuernos del Torres as a backdrop will remain etched in my mind forever.
I knew it. The fever had struck me. I had fallen in love with Chile and wanted to see more of what the country had to offer. I searched for a ticket from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt. The ferry, costing over five hundred USD, was more than my budget could handle. The buses, however, were booked out for the next five days. I bought a ticket and waited it out at Backpacker Nataly. Every day brought something interesting, from the constant streem of fellow hostellers to Willie's antics. On my penultimate day, I read an updated status report on Facebook from some of the crew from the Punta Tombo trip. They were in Bariloche and looking for others to hire a car with to do the Carratera Austral. CA was a name that I had first heard in El Calafate. Staying in an all-Israeli hostel, one of the crew from the Perito Moreno trip told me about it. I asked what there was to see and do and he didn't quite
Morning light
The rivers were so pure, we drank directly from them know. I checked the guidebook but there was not much information on it. Well, the most memorable travels are the ones you do not plan, the best memories of the events that just happened. So, let's make it happen, I thought and told the guys to wait, I would be in Bariloche in a few days.
Thirty-six hours of travel, two changes of bus, three border crossings later I was back in/out/in Argentina. We picked up a fourth travel companion that very same day and set off in our Chevrolet Corsa Classic to explore this remote part of the planet.
Heading south, pavement soon gave way to ripio, gravel roads, which would become our partners for the coming eight days. Our speed was reduced to a miserable 30km/h, all the better to view the surrounding scenery. Mountains, lakes, forests, rivers, glaciers, and a little further north even a volcano or more...Chile the Amazing.
Impressions were collected, memories burned into our brains and friendships solidified. But my curiosity pushed me on.
Santiago. A hostel with a swimming pool. Five days of relaxation followed by an amazing New Year...Valparaiso. A German guy in Bariloche kept going on and
Slovenians were here...
After hobbling my way up and down for two days it was a sight to behold on about it. The party to surpass all others in South America. The biggest fireworks display on the continent. The largest crowds and the most amazing party. It all came true.
No hay lugar / There is no room The replies from the ticket vendors were all the same. Trying to get from Santiago to Valparaiso was proving to be impossible.
Can we at least get something going in the general direction? Maybe 10km out of town from where we can hitchhike?
No! The salesmen were adamant.
Time for some ingenuity. Off we went to Los Andes, had lunch, bought champagne, took a walk and then squeezed ourselves onto a bus going to Valparaiso. A trip similar to going from Ljubljana to Zagreb via Salzburg. A one-and-a-half hour journey turned into nine. Off the bus, straight to dinner and then festivities until ten o'clock the next morning. We didn't make any hostel reservations. It would have been useless. The overpriced rooms were booked months in advance and we really didn't need one. We partied till ten, returned to Santiago, ate, checked back into our hostel, bathed, swam, sunbathed and crashed into bed 28 hours
Fisherman's paradise
I fished the bend at the bottom of the photo. Yeah! after setting off.
One more night and it was over. The girls stopped making out in front of me, the boarder guards got back to work and our taste of Chile was complete. Mmmm!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.047s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0189s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
