Smoking Volcanoes, Dance offs & Brightly Painted Churches

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Hey everyone.

Guys cheers for all the emails and messages. Gar especially, you´re playing a stormer...good to hear the news from home and that you guys are still keeping track of what we are getting up to. The skiing photos, what we have seen of them, look great. Another year without injury too.....that´s a good record.

Anyway we are back in Argentina. Another trek and a half to get here. Last time we spoke we were about to get a Ferry...we figured that would go off without much drama but we were wrong. We almost missed it because of a Fishermens protest in the town next to the port. We ended up having to walk around it, through a field and a stream and hitch a lift with a Chilean Student and his Dad to our ferry port. The town resembled Belfast in the 70´s once the fishermen were finished with it...nervous looking police in riot gear, rocks,barricades and fires all over the place. For the Mas and Das ..it was safer than you think...even though we couldn´t get through it was blowing over at that stage. There were actually some small children playing in the rubble.
We spent the next two days on the Ferry, which was surprisingly pleasant. We had a cabin with 2 other people, spent most of the day on deck listening to music and watching the scenary which included an angry Volcano which destroyed Chaiten a year ago and is still bubbling away now. Pretty humbling to see actually. In the evening we had a really good laugh playing cards and speaking bad spanish with the chilean students. College has just started back here.
Next stop was Puerto Montt. Quite a scruffy little town. But we stayed in a really nice hostel for one night before heading off to Chiloe Island, where we rented a car and buzzed around for 2 days. It resembles Ireland a little...if Ireland had sun. They have lots of Painted wooden churches dotted about...they are protected world heritage sites or something. Nothing much happened there...we found a really cute little Cabaña to stay in and chilled out.
Then it was time to say hello to our mates, the border police of Argentina for, I don´t know, the eight time.
This will be the last stop in Argentina for a few months......to be continued....

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Photos

Chilean student who helped us
Can´t actually remember his name oops

Chaiten Volcano
About to blow....we were a safe distance away though