Blogs from Araucanía, Chile, South America - page 29

Crossing the boarder from Bolivia into Chile was one of the most thorough and official border crossing experienced in South America. Driving into the Atacama desert, north of Chile, officials stripped searched all buses, cars, trucks etc. All passengers needed to off load their backpacks and unzip all pockets for thorough manual screening. Instead of being questioned for food or drugs it went more like "you have drugs..", "you have food si.." Immigration took about an hour and half, apparently there´s some sort of strike going on so a few people were just standing around looking pretty. San Pedro of the Atacama is the only town in the desert, a common route from the Salt Flats is to enter Chile via San Pedro. The town has a whopping population of 3000 with more backpackers roaming the ... read more

Me voilà de retour à Pucón pour escalader le volcan Villarrica. J´en avais été privé la semaine dernière en raison du mauvais temps... J´ai bien fait de revenir car c´est le grand beau temps ce samedi, aucun nuage à l´horizon. Après s´etre équipé à l´agence, on fait une pause au super marché pour acheter à manger et on part en voiture au parc national de Villarrica. On prend un télésiège (sans aucune protection) et on commence à grimper. Ce n´est pas si difficile que ca en fait, on marche en file indienne en faisant des pauses régulières. Il faut juste faire attention à ne pas glisser et dévaler mais rien de bien dangereux. Et puis on a tous notre pic à glace en cas de pépin! On voit tous les environs: lacs, montagnes et autres volcans! ... read more

I met up with my tour group on the first day and we arrived in Pucon late in the afternoon... a small resort town which sits at the base of a massive active volcano. Not a major party town but me and jay (room mate for this leg of the tour) organised ourselves with some tinnies and started drinking early. Basically Chile is famous for it´s seafood and wine so we had plenty of both. The next day we climbed the volcano...as usual i was a bit unprepared... as the average age of my tour group is around 30 i didn´t expect this to be some crazy hike. so we rock up at the base camp that morning and they start hooking us up with ice axes metal spikes for our boots etc. I thought it ... read more

Nick: Its going to be a long one!! We left Santiago at a reasonable hour, the bike now shod with a new rear. Our first days riding in 4 was a gentle re-introduction to 2-wheel travel with a mere 125 mile (200km) jaunt to Curicó, a small but, apparently, pleasant town. We arrived and soon found that virtually all accommodation was being used by migrant workers employed in the vineyards, so we saddled up again for another 40 miles (60km) to reach Talca: a town supposed to benefit from a big city attitude. We rode through and on our second attempt found lodging in a seemingly pleasant hostel, rode the bike down the drive to park it up and settled down to a restful night of snacks, cointreau and cable TV (Channel AXN is the BEST: ... read more

Hiya! The 37 hour journey was rough and uncomfortable, and we were subjected to hours and hours of 70's and 80's music which the Chilians seem to love but drew Maz CRAZY! Towards the end of the journey, I came out of the toilet and the TV screen said Dutch or English, then I looked at Maz and saw him pleading to take it off or put on a film but the 'waiter' werent having any of it! Poor Maz. We are now fluent in Dutch Rock History.... However, driving through Argentina to get back into Chile, the sites were amazing. There's all these little towns and villages that if we had time we would love to visit. We drove through valley's full of snow, saw beautiful lakes full of flamingoes etc etc. At Pucon, we ... read more