Mad Dogs and English Women

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I am now in Puerto Montt, Chile. Tonight we are getting a boat south into the glaciers of Patagonia. It is for four nights and five days but we are not entirely sure what is included as our Spanish is pretty shaky. Just been to the supermarket and stocked up on biscuits and wine, just in case!

After leaving Buenos Aires, we travelled to Sierra de la Ventana which is about 8 hours south of Buenos Aires. It was a small countryside village with a MILLION stray dogs. Most of you will know that they are not my favourite animal, but they are even more scary when they travel in packs and might be carrying rabies! As we got off the bus we were met by two particularly mangy-looking ones. By the time we had fought off a nagging woman trying to get us to go to her hotel, the dogs had lost interest and left - phew!

We walked off to the hostel we had picked out but got lost. There is obviously nothing better for the kids to do in this town than turn signs around! Eventually we found it after trekking for almost an hour with all our worldly possessions pressing down on us, and were met by five stray dogs - aaaargh! It was really scary. They seemed to live near to the hostel and so decided to leave and find somewhere else to stay so we wouldn’t be mauled to death every time we left the hostel. We walked back to and around town for almost two hours and they followed us all the way. When we went into shops to try and lose them, they just waited outside. It was sooooo annoying. It was pure adrenaline that allowed us to walk for two hours constantly with our heavy packs! Guess where we ended up staying in the end? With the fore-mentioned nagging lady, and the place turned out to be great!

After a few days we got another overnight bus to Bariloche in the foothills of the Andes. It was very un-South American, and very Swiss, right from the cutesy red windowboxes to the St Bernard dogs with barrels round their necks! Our first day there was pouring with rain so we spent all day going into the numerous chocolate shops trying to get as many free samples as possible. I think they were getting wise to us by the third round! We are setting off to the high seas (well, sort of) soon, with our travelling companion since Buenos Aires, an American called Ken who had worked and travelled in just about every country in the world.

I will write again when i get back to “civilisation”.

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Photos

Bariloche.
Swiss chalet type houses at the foot of the Andes.