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Published: April 28th 2015
Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago
The most beautiful Cathedral I can remember seeing...located in a wonder plaza in the heart of the citySo I have decided to give this travel blog thing a go….so much keeps happening that it’s hard to update everyone so hopefully this way I can share my experiences with you all on a more regular basis. I haven’t ever really read a travel blog before so I’m not sure what it’s meant to contain but here goes…(any tips or suggestions would be happily received!)
I re-cap of what I have been up to since departing Australia 4 weeks ago….
I flew into Santiago which is the capital city of Chile and spent a week there as my friend Yanna and I had signed up for a ‘super intensive’ Spanish course prior to leaving Aus. It was definitely intensive and we were in classes from 10am-6pm each day! We could barely speak English by the end of it let alone thinking and speaking in Spanish. I had studied a bit of Spanish while I was in Aus which was very helpful as all the lessons were spoken in compete Spanish– the teachers speak very little English which forces you to try and understand and communicate only in Spanish – a great challenge and an interesting experience at the
same time. It has been surprising to learn how any words are similar though e.g. perfect – perfecto. Important - importante. Traffic – traffico. Due to this whenever we don’t know a word we just seem to add a Spanish accent and the letter o, a or e to it and hope that it is close enough to the real Spanish word that people know what we are talking about…I’d say we have a higher fail rate that a success rate but there is always laughter involved!
Whilst in Santagio we did a walking tour around the city to see the local markets and an amazing cemetery. It’s called Cemetario General de Santiago and is nearly 200 years old and covers an area of over 117 football fields. The most common plot in the cemetery is a $1,000 USD plot that is a spot on/in a wall that is about 5m deep and half a metre wide. Often, as people can’t afford to buy the plot, it can be ‘rented out’ for 5 years and after that another cask can be added to it. The first person’s cask is removed and their remains are put into a smaller cask
Cemetario General de Santiago
A picture of the tomb I mentioned. There were rows upon rows of these walls. which is pushed to the back of the plot so the new casket can be put in. This can be repeated many times. The tour guide told us that the most names he has seen on a single tomb stone was 15!!
Yanna and I hadn’t planned an onward journey from Santiago so when one of the teachers at the Spanish school recommended a little town called Pucón we booked our ticket to travel 10 hrs south via an overnight bus.
In March a volcano in Pucón – Volcano Villarrica - had erupted so the town was very quiet as tourists flock to this little town for its outdoor activities including hiking the Volcano. The town itself reminded me very much of Queenstown in NZ – there was a tour company shop on every corner, no traffic lights and has an average yearly temperature of 16 degrees.
You could see the volcano from where we stayed and it was awesome! My first volcano and it was the stereotypical triangle shape with snow covering it and we were lucky enough to see it with smoke puffing out of the top of it (as of now it has still
not erupted again but the town is still on high alert for an evacuation).
We hired some mountain bikes and did a 50km ride to a lake called Lago Cabulga. On the trip out to the lake we road along the highway which was quite hair raising at times but on the way back we found a path that went through the countryside on a dirt track with the view of the volcano in front of us the whole time – it was a great way to spend the day!
After Pucón we travelled another 5 hrs south west to a little city on the coast called Valdivia and this is where we met up with our other travel buddy Clair! Clair had departed Ausralia a week before us and flew straight to Patagonia (southern Chile & Argentina) and had spent two weeks on a photography/trekking tour. It was so surreal to see her in South America! We decided to celebrate by having a night out. After going out for dinner and then having a few drinks in a bar we decided it was time to dance! We headed for the local dance club just after 11pm only
Glacier Walk - Andes
Feeding a little bird some crumbs to find it completely locked up with no one in sight. After talking to some locals using some broken Spanish/English we found out that the club didn’t even open until midnight!
We have since found out that this is quite normal in South America….the sun doesn’t rise til after 8am, breakfast goes til 10am, lunch is 3pm, they have a snack around 6pm and then have dinner at 9-10pm before heading out around 1am or 2am. We are still trying to get onto these timing schedules as our bellies seem to be engrained with the fact that dinner is 7pm!
We stayed in Valdivia for a few days before heading south again to a place called Puerto Varas which is 20km from where the more recently erupted volcano (Volcano Calbuco) is. It was a beautiful little place that I would have happily stayed in for a while – seems now that there was a reason we kept moving.
We explored the little town and found ourselves at the top of a hill which had a great view of the town, the lake it is situated on and the surrounding snow-capped mountains and volcanos. We went for a
day hike up Volcano Orsono – which is next to the one that erupted – which had some absolutely breathtaking views! I really really enjoyed this place for its quiet atmosphere and stunning scenery. Tranquil is the word that springs to mind.
We left Puerto Varas and the volcanoes behind us and crossed the border into Argentina to a city called Beriloche - a busy city with crazy traffic and more chocolate shops than we could even count! We spent a few down days here where we caught up on washing, spent hours just sitting in a coffee shop and again walking the streets to see everything.
We had decided to head south into Patagonia from Beriloche however due to its isolated location the 17 hr bus trip was quite expensive so we crunched some numbers and discovered it would be cheaper to rent a car for 9 days and to do the drive ourselves….next thing we know we have Beriloche in our rear view mirror and 1500km of road in front of us.
I have never seen any roads that have been straighter, flatter or longer that the ones we encounted on our way to El
Chalten! The quality of the roads were quite surprising with only one 75km stretch of dirt road that was a construction site for a new road being built – luckily however we made it through with all four tires still pumped up and no dents in the car from the rocks that flew up and seemed to attack the car.
We got into El Chalten in the evening after spending two days driving and caught a magnificent sunset overlooking Mt Fitzroy – again another spectacularly beautiful place. El Chalten is a tiny little mountain village with around 1,000 local residents and has been named Capital Nacional del Trekking (Argentina’s Trekking Capital).
Clair and I had decided to brave the weather and go for a couple of days trekking and camping. Clair had already done this trip on her photography tour however after spending 3 days shooting the amazing scenery in the area she had lost her memory card from her camera so she was very keen to re-shoot some of her photos.
On the first day we had an easy 3 hour walk to our campsite so we enjoyed a beautiful sunrise on the outskirts of town
before we headed off around midday. We arrived and got to enjoy a lovely afternoon just sitting at the foot with the spectacular Cerro Torres as our backdrop. There is a glacier that melts into a lagoon which then turns into a roaring river in front of us. We captured a fantastic sunset and then headed to bed as once the sun went down it was dark and cold.
The next morning we woke for sunrise (which is often after 8am by the way so no early 5am wake ups luckily!) and packed up our little campsite to start the trek towards the base of Mt Fitzroy and Lagoona De los Tres – one of the most sought after trek and viewpoint in the area.
When we got there Clair decided to stay at the bottom of the massive hill climb. She had been sick for a few days and had already done the climb a couple of weeks earlier so I went off on my own to discover what layed at the top of the big climb. It was definitely the hardest walk I’d done so far on the trip and it didn’t help that there was
gale force winds the whole way up that could literally blow you over. When I got to the top though my sore lungs and legs were quickly forgotten – the view was just indescribable. The view of the gigantic, 3km high mountain in front of me just made me smile – I barely had any words. Then when I turned around I was able to see the area we had been hiking all morning and it had little lakes and rivers dotted everywhere. I happily sat there contemplating life and how grateful I am for amazing experiences such as this. Eventually though the wind decided to up its roar even more to the point it felt unsafe to stay at the top so I made my way back down to Clair who I found sitting in a little hut with every piece of clothing she owned on and looking mighty fashionable with her thermal pants on over her trekking pants.
We headed off for the campsite that we planned to spend the night at however as we were walking the wind kept howling and with it brought some rain so we re-evaluated our plan and decided to hike all
Valdivia
A street corner captures the diversity this city can have. If you saw either half of this photo separately you would assume they were completely different places - let alone across the street from each other the way back to town for the night. It made for an unexpected long day and I was completely exhausted when we stumbled onto the main road just as the sun was going down but you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. There may or may not have been a few squeals of pure joy and air fist pumping.
We then headed further south the next day to El Calafate and booked ourselves into a busy hostel on the outskirts of town and booked a glacier tour for the following day – which was also Yanna’s 25th birthday!
As we had the luxury of our own car we had chosen the option of driving ourselves to the port where the boat would take us to glacier. We drove our little car in the pitch black through the rain, as the sun was still yet to rise, along the windy national park roads until we found where we needed to be.
Unfortunately the rain didn’t stop for the duration of our 2 hour glacier hike so although it was beautiful and an awesome experience, we were quite cold and wet by the end of it. I had
My first attempt at hitch hiking
I was scared of rejection so didn't give it my all. Luckily after I plucked up enough courage to fully commit the next vehicle to pass was the bus we had been waiting for. never worn ‘crampons’ before (spiked “shoes” that they attached to your shoes to help you walk on the ice) but as with all hired equipment they are the basic style and I very much envied the guides who ran across the ice like it was grass and who could run up a slope just using their toes which dug into the gradient using the spikes at the front of their crampons. Due to the terrible weather the guides worked tirelessly to chip out paths for us to walk up and down the glacier’s ragged terrain and they were always there to assist anyone having trouble going up or down a slope.
The girls and I were fine and as the instructions of how to move downhill eres to bend your knees, stamp your feet into the ice and lean back we decided to turn this into a dance move and soon had a couple off guides joining in with us.
After a few hours of being on the ice and in the rain it was a pretty soggy ride back to town! Luckily Yanna had spotted a patisserie on the drive out in the morning so we eagerly
Dress ups !!
Forte de Niebla Valdivia returned to select something delicious to celebrate Yanna’s birthday. We were trying to decide which treat to choose and was wondered why we hadn’t been served as people who came in after us had already come and gone. A friendly english speaking Argentine man explained that we had to get a ticket (like you do at the deli section of Woolworths or Coles) and after he saw us struggling to communicate to the lady behind the counter exactly what we were after he stepped in and helped us order. Although he didn’t speak fluent English, he did tell us that we were all going to die of sugar due to how many cake and treats we had bought! (I am happy to report that we are all indeed alive and well and that the cakes were amazing!)
To celebrate Yanna’s birthday we went out to a Parrilla restaurant (a traditional Argentinian meal of meat – much like Churasco) that had been recommended to us – it was located only 200m from our hostel and had a wonderful view over the town and the lake. I told the waiters (in spanish) that it was Yanna’s birthday so they were very
friendly and offered to bring out a dessert for Yanna with a candle in it as a surprise…it was such a nice gesture and they even joined in when we sang her happy birthday! We had a wonderful night spent drinking Argentinian wine and using our Spanish skills with the waiters who could just understand what we were trying to say.
The next 3 days were spent in the car driving back to Bariloche.
When we left El Calafate to drive north again we had been driving for 3 hrs when we reached the long dirt road that had been difficult to drive a few days earlier. Just as we were approaching the start of it we saw a similar sized car to ours that had just completed the track and was on the side of the road – their red car barely recognizable due to the mud that now coated it.
They seemed to wave us down so we stopped and through very limited English and Spanish mixed with some mime we interpreted that the old man was telling us it was impossible to go down the road using the car we had. We didn’t doubt
Walking the streets...
There are so many homeless dogs at every town we visit. They all have full bellies and seemed to be quite well looked after. Sometimes we get up to 6 following us at once - our own little wolf pack. him due to how much rain we had had during the week and how his car looked. Although it was painful, we had to double back past El Calafate and head even further south and then to the west coast of Argentina so we could drive sealed roads north to Bariloche.
In the end, it took us 3 days to reach Bariloche and after having the car for only 9 days we ticked over 5000km on the odometer. We were quite relieved to make it back all in one piece and to hand the car over without any hassles!
We are now in Bariloche having a catch up day and it is a different view from when we were here a week ago. The ash from Volcano Calbuco, which is only 100km from here, has spread through the air and it looks like a fog is blanketing the city.
We have booked a plane ticket to Buenos Aries for tomorrow however we have heard from some locals that there is a high chance the flight will be cancelled due to the ash cloud. Our other travel option is a 17hr bus trip so we will just have
to wait and see.
Well, I guess thing brings me to the end of my first and very long blog entry! Apologies if I rambled on a bit – there is literally so many things I have missed out but hopefully you get the gist of where I have been and what amazing countries Chile and Argentina have been.
(there are a few more photos below so be sure to check them out!!)
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clintos
non-member comment
wowsa
seriously… the adventure sounds too good to be true. I wish i could just pack up and join you on the rest of the journey.. The pics look incredible and you're not a bad writer. good in fact! So keep at it! x