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Published: November 15th 2006
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Volcan Villarica
She´s gonna blow! Hola and greetings from South America and the gringo capital of Chile: San Pedro de Atacama.
We crossed the pacific with LAN Chile (quite good actually) from Chistchurch (via Auckland) and arrived in Santiago on the 1st November (about 5 hours before we left!) We headed into Santiago by bus and made our way to the Casa Roja hostel (a fairly popular backpacker place in town). After the longest day of our lives and about 6 meals we finally headed to bed.
The next day and some "which way now?" later, we agreed that before we head off into South America proper it might be worth trying to get some basics of communication (booking bus tickets, rooms, pitchers of beer etc) and signed ourselves onto a Spanish course in the hostel. So with Jesus, our Peruvian teacher, we did a 5 day, 20 hour course in Spanish. Fortunately it was just the two of us and as i stumbled through, Sarah seemed to pick up some of the lingo well. A good course actually and so far very useful: Sarah´s booked us a few trips and i´m now asking barmen for " a beer" rather than "a head" -
On top of the volcano
can i ash-k you something... silly language.
In the meantime we got over the jetlag (gotta love being wide awake at 5 in the morning) and got out and about a bit and explored Santiago. I can´t say we were amazingly impressed: it´s safe, fairly clean, a decent metro, a couple of parks, views of the Andes.. but not much buzz we thought. I have the impression it´s a better place once you get to know it. Anyway we went to a couple of the parks with views over the city, a decent museum (Sarah as usual was bored well within the hour) and a few restaurants. Also had a booze up in the hostel - it´s great they sell beer by the litre bottle for less than a pound! Owing to the lack of practice in the drinking department, i was fairly pickled for less than a fiver and practising my new found Spanish with a serious lack of finesse.
After our studies - I have to say it felt a bit weird, i haven´t had to do homework for a while! - we needed to get travelling again. We booked our bus ticket (using our new found pigeon Spanish) to Pucon.
Our first of many bus journeys (10 hours) took us overnight to this nice little town in the Lake District of Chile somewhere in the middle of this massive country. Buses are the way to travel and they´re pretty good - we opted for a semi cama bus which basially means your seat is a semi bed (goes to about 45o and you get a leg rest thing) and allows some sort of sleep!
Pucon is surrounded by lakes, mountains, green fields and volcanoes. The biggest draw being Volcan Villarica, a snow-covered active volcano near the town which constantly has smoke pumping out the top (looks like an example from a GCSE textbook). This clearly doesn´t bother the locals and tourists alike as when the weather is good (it can be very unpredictable) a couple of hundred people a day trek up to the top. We found ourselves a little "hospedaje" to stay in (someone´s house) and wandered into town. The town is a tourist town and littered with agencies - it´s like shopping for a woman´s handbag as far as I´m concerned, they all look and do the same bloody thing! Anyway, we booked with one company to
climb the volcano the next day and for a trip to the thermal pools that afternoon. We hooked up with a couple of Aussies and a Swede from our hospedaje and headed to the pools. They were nice and varied from roughly 30 degres (nice but a bit chilly) to about 50 I think (I didn´t stay long to check - too long in here and your'e soup).
So the next day we were up at 6.15 for our trek up the volcano. We got kitted up with trousers, jackets, scarves, boots, crampons (not needed in the end), gloves and ice picks! Then made our way to the base of the volcano and the start of our 1200m odd climb to the top. Fortunately a ski lift cuts out a bit of the climb but the majority and roughly 4/5 hours of climbing still needs to be done. So we made our way up the volcano playing follow my leader behind the guide and zig zagging our way like a line of ants up the ice to the top. It is quite hard work actually and you´re definitely glad of the ice pick to support you and clothing to
Overlooking the Atacama
"Go on.. Jump!" said Sarah cover you as the ice is steep and unsurprisingly cold! At the top you can see and walk around the crater which is all the time emitting puffs of smoke that when point in your direction really choke you. At one viewing point we were even watching lumps of orange molten lava bubbling up and (fortunately) back down into the crater - cool and not seen that often apparently. Fortunately it was a stunningly clear day as well and views over the Andes, other volcanoes and lake district were equally impressive.
The way down was far easier and the volcano essentially became the biggest toboggan run we´ve been on. The strategy for 2/3rds of the way down was simply sit on your backside and slide whilst trying to use your ice pick for a brake (or to make you go faster if you´re a big kid) - now this was good fun. Unfortunately we had to walk the rest of the way back owing to lack of a big enough slope and the slush-like ice at the bottom proved difficult going - particularly for Sarah´s ankles which were attacked by her unforgiving boots. A good day, fairly tiring but
definitely worth it (although Sarah´s ankles disagreed).
After Pucon it was back to Santiago for a stopover before heading up north. It was a 24 hour bus journey that brought us up to San Pedro (you can fly half way around the world in 24 hours are my thoughts but i best get used to them). The journey was uneventful until about 18 hours in when we had a shift change on board. And it appears we got the new-boy bus driver as after only 15 minutes at the wheel he got a little too affectionate with a signpost, scraped one side of the bus and put a whole window through - oops. Bus number 2 took an hour or so to come (thank god he did this in a town) and then onwards we continued. Only after 3 hours did he realise that the driest desert in the world and a big metal bus in the middle of the day might call for some air con! (He still had to get another bus driver to turn it on as this obviously wasn´t in his "how to become a bus driver in one easy step booklet") So after 26
Sheep Dip - Chilean Style
We saw this on the way to the Atacama salt flat hours and one sheepish looking driver later we arrived in the oasis town of San Pedro de Atacama.
San Pedro has probably the biggest gringo (foreigner) to local ratio we´ve seen yet as it is the place to explore the Atacama region (home to salt flats and the driest desert on earth). So it´s expensive and busy but with that comes a nice enough laid-back atmosphere (you don´t get a choice in the heat and altitude), decent food and accommodation. Then you get the tour companies - like Pucon they all sell the same thing so choosing is really just a matter of "which one did you trust the most". Not being ones for the big organised tours, we got on a couple of shorter 4 hour tours. They´re the best way of seeing the places that you come here to see (we´re not cycling that far in this heat!). First day we went to the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and on this trip we saw some of the stunning scenery in this desolate part of the world. The salt and the rock formations are impressive and the sunset over them was beautiful to see. Yesterday we
took a trip to the Atacama salt flat (one of the biggest in the world). This is a huge expanse of crystallised rocks and a series of lakes with an interesting amount of wildlife including many flamingoes. Again very interesting and another nice sunset to boot.
Tonight we board another bus (10 hours) and make our way further north (if we´d gone this far north from London we´d be well and truly in the sea by now) to the top of Chile. Then it´s on to Peru and the next leg of our journey.
Adios chicos
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Shaggy
non-member comment
sheep dip?
having grown up rearing sheep, we've done a lot of special things with our animals, however i've never seen anyone insert their arm up the sheep's rectum whilst giving them a "dip", care to explain what were missing out on in the west country?