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Nicky: In an attempt to escape the rain in Chile - which you may have heard on the news is the worst they have ever had and is flooding lots of the main cities- we headed south from Talca to Pucon. It is kind of like the adventure capital of Chile and we hoped it would be cold but at least dry so we could see the lake and volcano on which it is set. Apparantly the volcano frequently belts out smoke and ash so the people living in Pucon are on constant volcano watch. After the volcano eruption a little further south in Chile maybe visiting it wasnt the greatest idea but as it turned out it was too grey and miserable to see the top anyway!The lake was really pretty surrounded by hills on three sides and with black sand like you get in Lanzarote (I assume because of the volcanic matter in the soil). Probably the most adventurous thing we did while we were in Pucon though was eat Antarctic Krill, I figured you were only going to get it near the Antarctic and this was probably the closest we were going to get. I can´t say it
tastest of very much, just sort of mildly fishy.
From Pucon we caught an overnight train back up to Santiago - we were going to go further south but it is so wet we didnt see the point and thought we would aim for hopefully drier Argentina. So we arrived back in Santiago at 7am, tried to book tickets across the Andes, only to realise that neil had ´lost´his visa. To be fair it is only a bit of paper we were given at customs but it does have an important looking stamp on. Obviously Neil didnt think it was important enough and was convinced he had thrown it away.
So,we checked into a hostel in Santiago, rootmarched across the city to the international policestation, not overly happy about trying to explain how we had ´lost´ this visa, only to find the police were on holiday. (It was Chilean independance day). By this time we were both a little tetchy and trying to work out how Neil was ever going to get out of the country (if you need it to book a bus out you can bet you need it for flying!) So we went back to the hostel
and on the walk back I had a mini epiphany and remembered I had put this bit of paper in neil´s camera case. (I don´t know why I couldn´t remember this before!!) Panic over we went back to the bus station to try and book the tickets, only to find the pass across the mountains had been closed by the bad weather and avalanches and wasn´t going to open for another few days!!AHHHH! We certainly weren´thrilledabout spending a few more days in Santiago -its a great city but we had seen everything we wanted to see and it was starting to get expensive. To cut what is getting quite a long story short we decided to visit Valparaiso, which is on the coast about an hour from Santiago and hope the pass opened soon.
Valparaiso is a really unusual town, it is set on the coast surrounded by hills. All of the town houses are built into the hills and painted an amazing array of colours. The only way to reach some of these hill areas is by a little cart that goes up the hill like a ski-lift. Of course it was raining so we couldn´t wander as much
as we would have liked but it was a town full of character and I bet it is great in the summer.
And when we got back to the station we managed to book tickets over the Andes as well, so the day was looking up!
Getting a bus over the Andes had been another one of those things that I really wanted to do before we started this trip so I was delighted we managed to get across. It is a beautiful journey and at one point we realised we were higher than the peak of Mount Cook in NZ!! The tops of the mountains were covered in fresh snow and it was so bright where the sun was reflecting off it. The road was incredibly steep and wound around really sharply, sometimes the bus barely had time to straighten out again before it was turning another corner, and the bus drivers took great delight in racing each other up these roads. I guess if you do the journey two or three times a week the steep drops off the edge don´t seem so scary!! Sometimes the road turned into a tunnel that had been cut into the side
of the mountain and there were massive avalanche protectors over these tunnels, which kind of brought home how dangerous this pass could get. It was a fantastic journey and totally worth waiting for though.
Neil:
You wouldn´t believe the grief "I" got for losing my tourist visa. I don´t like it when she tidies up after me!
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