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Published: December 2nd 2009
Since I last wrote, we have been taking life at a slightly slower pace, well that is until we climbed a 6056m volcano yesterday but more on that later.
20 November (day 27) - Travelling to Mendoza
There is something slightly crazy about flying from Bariloche to Mendoza via Buenos Aires (if you look on a map you will see why), but that is what we had to do. We turned up at the airport slightly early as we knew giving back the car could take a while, only to find that our flight was at 12.30pm and not 11.30am - nice of them to tell us. Handing back the car was fairly easy, just quite costly. First the man read the clock wrong and tried to say we had driven 800km further than we had, but even with the correct reading we were 1,445km over our budgeted allowance. The total distance we (James) had driven in 16 days was a whopping 4,645km which averages as 290km a day.
We had the pleasure of being upgraded for our first flight, which disappointingly meant only a bit more legroom and the same food and drink as everyone else. We
had just over 3 hours in BA so decided to get a cab to Palermo to have some lunch. We chose a place called Bio and stuffed down some great vege food (anything but chocolate or sweets). We decided we had time to walk back to the airport so set off at a stroll up through Palermo and through the many parks between us and our destination. All was well until we first got trapped in the Botanical Gardens and had to double back and then reached a very busy underpass on a main road with no pavement. We were really tight on time so had no choice but to walk along the edge of the road with car and lorries roaring past us.
We got a cab from Mendoza airport to the Park Hyatt, the most luxurious place we have stayed by a long way. We spent a while just wandering round our room - a luxury in itself as very few places have been big enough for us to swing a cat in let alone wander round. We then ventured to the restaurant out on the terrace, noting the casino and swimming pool on the way. We
celebrated our new found luxury with bellinis then got back to our room to find chocolates and champagne waiting for us - fantastic.
21 November (day 28) - Mendoza
We have been keeping track of the modes of transport we use each day, which is normally at least 2 different types, but today was blissfully a day of no transport at all unless you count a running machine.
We started the day with an hour of exercise in the gym (the novelty of having a gym in the hotel will soon wear off I am sure). Breakfast was a feast. Like any good hotel they had a massive buffet with everything from piles of fresh fruit to salmon, cheese and ham and hundreds of different sweet pastries. Needless to say we didn't hold back.
We had a stroll around Mendoza to get our bearings. We thought it was a nice place, with various pretty squares with people sunbathing and relaxing and a couple of good restaurant areas.
Our room rate included one free lunch, so we headed back to the hotel and enjoyed a very good three course meal only disturbed by some over-keen gay
Americans who were keen to share their experiences (only the travelling experiences that is!) with us. They were actually quite helpful and gave us some good restaurant tips, we chose to ignore their wine tour recommendation which cost them $135 each - no wine can be that good.
James had booked a haircut for 4pm so I headed to the pool expecting him to join me about 45 minutes later. About 15 minutes later he appeared, with shorter hair and having changed and put suncream on. Apparently the barber turned up 5 minutes late, laughed and said 'no' to James' 'habla Ingles?' and then proceeded to zoom clippers round most of his hair and cut the odd hair off the top. My job when we got back to the room was to cut the remaining hairs that he had missed!
I won't go into too much detail about the beauty treatment I had but for anyone who has ever had waxing done, has there ever been a kitchen knife involved? This is the fun I endured, all in the name of vanity.
To celebrate our respective hair removal, we cracked open the bottle of champagne then went
for some wine tasting. It was a great place called Vines of Mendoza where you choose your flight (tasting menu) and are then get on with tasting the stuff. Now the Mendoza region is about 75% red wines, not great for us. We chose the only white wine flight on the menu and tucked into 5 very different and pretty good wines. Neither of us know much at all about wine, but we really liked the torrentes, a grape which is now only grown in Argentina. We had planned to do another flight with some reds in but hadn't realised the quantity they would give so settled for one glass of red, which was actually quite drinkable.
Although they had given us crackers with the wine, I had clearly not eaten enough. James would tell you I spent the rest of the evening in a drunken stupor, I would more describe it as being a little tipsy. I had a very urgent need for an empanada (pastry snack) so dragged James round the whole of Mendoza looking for one. We failed to find one but stumbled on a local teenage band playing in the square so listened for a
while. We eventually settled for a hamburger in the hotel then hit the casino. This was our least successful casino visit to date (we normally come out at least even). We lost ever game of roulette and almost every game of black jack we played. The slot machines were so popular we couldn't get on one so decided to call it quits.
22 November (day 29) - Mendoza
We had planned to get some washing done but as it was Sunday and everything was shut was decided a whole day by the pool was a much better idea.
After a huge breakfast, where this time we acquired some salmon sandwiches for our lunch, we headed to the pool. It was a baking 35 degrees. Unusually for me, I couldn't sit in the sun for long so moved my chair behind a bush (well pretty much into the bush) for some shade. We decided to have a long break from the sun at lunch so went to the gym again (the aircon isn't very good so you can imagine what a pleasant experience that was) then had our sandwiches. The afternoon was more sun and an ice-cream. When
we came back to our sun loungers and picked up our books, half of the pages fell out as the glue had melted - we are now throwing away each page when we have read it!
We managed another 20 mins in the gym in the evening, which was only bearable because ESPN were showing the ATP masters tennis - we now know what we will be watching for the rest of the week. We had dinner at Azafran, a pretty upmarket restaurant - well you can probably tell that by the fact we ate tuna carpaccio, wild boar, goat salad, beef wellington and molten chocolate pudding. We have definitely failed to get out of the habit of eating in the nicest (and most expensive) restaurants everywhere we go. We are a bit concerned that after the amazing food in Chile and Argentina, Ecuador may disappoint. Mendoza was the first place we had 'musicians' play over dinner. We had to give the man who played jingle bells on panpipes some pesos for pure comedy.
23 November (day 30) - Mendoza
It was a usual start to the day of gym and big breakfast and get sandwiches for
lunch, but today we braved the big wide world and headed to the wine region of Maipu. We went for the budget option of getting the bus then hiring bikes. Feeling reasonably adventurous we set off for the bus stop, only to be approached by an English bloke with a British bulldog tattoo asking us if we were going to Maipu and giving us information about his bike rental company. He even ended up buying our bus tickets for us as we didn't have any coins. Any concerns of not knowing when to get off the bus quickly vanished when on arrival at the right stop a man shouted bike hire here in a very loud voice. For some reason we were only charged 30 pesos for both of our bikes when everyone else was charged 30 for each bike - maybe he thought we looked poor.
We set off down the paved road which soon turned to gravel. The bikes were rubbish but we weren't in any hurry as it was 39 degrees. We had planned to cycle to the furthest point 11km away and meander back, stopping at 4 or 5 vineyards on the way back. Our
plan was slightly scuppered by a policewoman who told us the road was closed until 1.30pm. Luckily we were near 2 vineyards so we first stopped at Tempus Alba, did the self guided tour, decided it was too early for wine and ate our lunch outside. The one across the road was Vino del Cuerno where the woman told us we had to wait an hour for a tour, we cycled out and back in then asked a man who took us on the tour straight away. Tour is a grand word for the 5 minutes it took for him to show us the tanks and the bottled wines they make. We tried a sparkling wine and a red then were on our bikes again. We made it to the end point and visited an olive oil factory called LAUR. The tour wasn't too exciting but the tasting of the olive oil with bread, sundried tomatoes etc was worth the £1. We wish in some ways that we were ending our trip here as Christmas presents would be easy - olive oil and bottles of wine all round!
Our next stop was Carinae which was by far the best
tour. The lady actually took time to explain the process and show us the tanks, barrels etc. Our tasting was meant to be 1 rose and 2 red wines, but I managed to convince her to give me 1 white, 1 rose and 1 red. As there are only a limited number of vineyards in the area and there are lots of people doing the same thing, you end up bumping into the same people at each stop. We chatted to a couple from New York who were in our hotel and for the rest of the day, everywhere we went they seemed to be there.
We turned up at our next vineyard, Di Tomasso, to find it so full of bikes we didn't know where to leave ours. We found a place and decided to just drink a glass of wine and a lemonade rather than pay for another tour. Just as we were settling down to enjoy our drinks a very big group of (posh) English gap year students arrived, talking way too loudly in their public school voices. I branded them before they even opened their mouths - James said it takes one to know one!
We didn't hang around long and headed for our last stop, a chocolate and liquor factory. We both knew we didn't like liquors but ordered one chocolate and banana and one dulche de leche, naively thinking that might disguise the liquor taste - not a chance. The chocolates weren't that great either.
We returned our bikes, turned down an offer of a shared taxi back to Mendoza and caught the bus back instead (James got a free ride as we didn't have enough change). Dinner was meant to be something cheap and cheerful but on our way out we passed a place called Francesco that the Americans had recommended - you don't need me to tell you where we ended up. We did at least have some control and only ordered main course. On our way out we spotted the NY couple in the same place.
24 November (day 31) - To Valparaiso
Having enjoyed 4 nights of luxury, today we returned to backpacker world, it was horrid having to pack everything into our bags and head for the airport (obviously after our last very big breakfast). We declined the 60 peso hotel taxi and hailed a
25 peso cab instead. We arrived at the airport in good time only to find the longest queue possible for check-in. It took about an hour to check in, we could have eaten even more breakfast! We bought our last Alfajores (this being our last stop in Argentina) and boarded the plane. The journey was spectacular with views of the Andes, including Aconcagua.
Santiago airport was the first place we have felt properly hassled. We exited with our backpacks to a wall of people trying to get us into their taxi/shuttle bus etc. I ploughed through them with an evil look on my face and found the bus stop where I knew we could get into town for a tenth of the price. Our transport links were very smooth, we got the airport bus to a bus station outside Santiago (Pajaritos) then a bus to Valparaiso from there. The buses here are so much more efficient than in England. The bus to Valparaiso passed through a big white wine region - maybe we should have waited until now for our wine tasting.
We got a cab to our hostel - Valparaiso is situated on 42 very steep hills
and our hostel was half way up one of them. The man in the hostel gave us a map and an idea of what we should be seeing and we headed out for the afternoon. We weren't sure what to expect of this port town which is apparently loved by many artists, writers etc. Being the arty types, we thought we would feel right at home! I think the words that best describe our view of it are chaotic, ramshackle, dirty and smelly - that said we didn't hate the place. The first place we walked through was known as the 'open art' area, which was literally a load of graffiti on walls and staircases on the way down from our hostel to the flat port area. James was not impressed and said if he owned the town he would paint all of the walls white, shoot all the dogs and clean up the pee smell. We walked past the port and took a lift (there are loads of very old lifts up the side of most of the steep hills) to the naval museum. Needless to say we didn't go in - why would we spoil a record of
no museums so far on our trip? The view was pretty good though. Our tour continued round the town, up and down the hills and we eventually ended up on Conception hill where we tucked into a big slice of lemon pie then decided to have an early dinner and head back to the hostel. We chose a completely empty pub/restaurant and had very low expectations of the tacos and pasta but they turned out to be quite nice.
Back at the hostel we watched the end of Federer v Murray in the communal living room (a game we had had tickets for so were interested to see what it was like). Two German girls came to join us and wanted to watch a DVD. They chose 'I am Legend' so we settled down to our first full film of the trip. We kept expecting it to get better, but it didn't. Not to be defeated, they then chose another film but by this time (about 11.30pm) we were ready to hit the sack.
25 November (day 32) - Santiago
Another smooth connection saw us out of a cab at 9.27am and onto a bus back to
Santiago at 9.30am. We (I) had read that the thing to do was to get off the bus at Pajaritos and get the metro into town to avoid the downtown traffic - this was definitely a good tip. As is the case everywhere in the world we have been, the metros are so much bigger and better than in London.
Our hotel (Chilhotel) is the most anal place we have stayed. Not only did we have to fill in a booking form when we booked (normally an e-mail will do), but we had to have our passports photocopied and he made a real fuss that we didn't have our entry cards in our passports.
We had arranged to meet Kara and Martin, friends of my school friend Ros who had pretty much done the same route as us so we had been asking for tips the whole way along, for a drink at 3.30pm. We had time to do the Lonely Planet walking tour first, which started with lunch in the fish market (strange walking tour). We looked round the market, which was interesting to see what the fish we had been eating actually look like, then followed
one of the many restaurant touts to a busyish restaurant. There was a lot of commotion just outside and looking at the TV screen in the restaurant we could see it was live from the fish market we were in. There were bikini clad girls and a man in trunks prancing up and down the market which was creating a lot of interest with all of the men in the area. James didn't want to miss out so headed over to take a look.
The rest of the city walk was less eventful. We watched lots of old men playing chess in the Plaza de Armas and lots of teenagers canoodling in Santa Lucia park then headed to meet Kara and Martin. Having not met them before, I was hoping the pictures on their blog were enough to identify them. We sat on a bench outside their hostel and probably couldn't have looked more English if we tried, with our sunglasses on our heads and Lonely Planet in full view. We were spotted quite easily and after some discussion, headed for a beer/wine/fruit juice. After a couple of hours of constant chatting, we moved location to a Turkish cake
shop where we stayed until we decided it was time for dinner. The Lonely Planet guided us to a sushi restaurant where we shared a bottle of nice wine for £3.50 and a huge boat of sushi. Not quite ready to call it an evening, we consulted the Lonely Planet again in search of a bar. As we hadn't been back to our hotel, we were still in our clothes from the afternoon which for James was shorts and T shirt with his sunglasses still on his head. The area we were walking round is the gay area of Santiago, so when I gave James my pink bag to carry as well we were a bit worried he would attract unwanted attention. We found a bar where we tasted our first pisco sours. Kara and Martin being experts on this topic, said they were ok but not the best they had had. By 12.45am we were all flagging so decided to call it a night and we caught a cab back to our hotel. Although we have met some nice people on our trip so far, it was great to be able to have proper conversations that weren't just finding
out where people are from and sharing travelling advice.
26 November (day 33) - Santiago and to San Pedro de Atacama
We must be complete lightweights because we both woke up feeling a little worse for wear. We meandered through the Bellavista neighbourhood which was quite dead at 11am and got the funicular up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal from where there are amazing views of the city with the Andes in the background. We decided to walk down, which was a lot longer and hotter than we expected. Lunch was at Cafe del Patio, just by our hotel, where we shared a delicious prawn stir fry and pizza. We then grabbed our bags, bought Subway sandwiches for our dinner and caught the metro and then bus to the airport. We made a great discovery while waiting for our plane - Dunkin Donuts smoothies - if you haven't had one then you have to.
On arrival at Calama airport slightly earlier than expected, we had 2 slight panics. First, my bag didn't arrive and second, the Localiza car rental desk was empty. The first of these put me into a panic and after some broken
Spanish I was pointed to the check-in desks, where for some unknown reason my bag was waiting for me. When I got back, James had made progress on the second issue and had managed to get the man from First rent a car to phone the lady from Localiza. We were assured she would be there in 10 minutes. 45 minutes later she arrived having quite clearly already gone home for the evening. The paperwork was loosely filled in and we were on our way, this time in a tiny Mazda. We took a detour to fill up with petrol and then drove the 100km to San Pedro.
When we had booked the hostel the owner, Sylvia, had been worried about us arriving late at night in the dark and had asked us to ring so she could meet us. When we arrived we saw why she was worried, the streets were narrow with no lights and she lived down a maze of roads. Our room was about 100 degrees when we arrived but we were quite tired so got to sleep ok. Unfortunately it didn't stay that way as we were woken up first with Spanish people smoking
and talking outside our window and then with dogs barking all night (there are hundreds of stray dogs that just roam around all day and night in big packs!).
27 November (day 34) - San Pedro de Atacama - Altiplano lakes and Laguna Chaxa
Breakfast was served until 9am so we dragged ourselves up and then went back to bed. Given that we are now at about 2,500m above sea level, every bottle of shampoo, moisturiser etc we open bursts in our face which led a shampoo in eye experience which was quite painful. We headed into town just before lunch to investigate tour and volcano climbing options. We didn't seriously think we would climb a volcano, but we thought we would ask anyway. After 2 circuits of the town (lots of one way roads and no road signs), we found the main street and parked. San Petro is what I imagined the rest of Chile and Argentina to be like, dusty roads, flat roofed single story buildings and lots of people touting their tours - in spite of the touts we both really liked it. It took about 5 minutes to walk the length of the street
and find a tour agency that looked ok - Cosmo Andino. The man was very helpful and gave us loads of information about all of the tours. We planned to do most of the sights ourselves so asked cunning questions about where the tours went so we could do them on our own. He also had information about climbing 3 volcanoes in the area, one which was active but only 5,600m and one which was dormant but 6,056m. We told him we would think about it over lunch.
We found a lovely courtyard cafe in the square and had great mixed juice smoothies, an enormous burger and chorizo pizza, while we discussed our options. We decided we wanted to climb the active volcano. We wanted to check the price in one more place before paying over £120 each so headed down to a place recommended in the Lonely Planet. The place was deserted apart from Gabriel, one of their guides. He gave us some information, but was clearly wanting to get us out of the shop so we gave him a lift back into town and walked along the high street while he told us the agency was over-priced
and he would take us to the Lascar volcano on Sunday for £100 each. He said he would drop off some information at our hostel and then we could decide if we wanted to book with him. His parting words didn't fill us with confidence though as he said he was going to Antafogasta (200km away) that afternoon for some days off.
We decided that if Cosmo Andino could book the climb now, then we would pay the extra to avoid worrying about Gabriel getting too drunk and staying in Antafogasta. We returned to Cosmo Andino and had to wait behind a German couple who were also asking about volcano climbing. When it came to our turn we booked onto the 4am tour to the El Tatio geysers for the next morning and asked about climbing. As the agency will only use one guide, who has 25 years of experience on these volcanoes, we were told that the Germans (who wanted to climb a smaller and dormant volcano) had got in first - typical!. I think the man was keen not to lose £240 though and asked us to return later that evening once he had had time to
talk to the Germans again to see if they would be interested in climbed the active volcano instead.
As it was now 2.30pm and we had planned to go to see some altiplano lakes and watch the sunset over a lake in the salt plains (an 8 hour tour for Cosmo Andino), we didn't have time to look elsewhere, so grabbed a very big ice-cream and headed on our way. In usual Sarah and James fashion, we took a slight detour off the main (paved) road when we saw a nice looking gorge. The 8 hour tour he described talked about going to a gorge so we thought it must be this one. We bumped our way along what started as a track but soon turned into rocks and sand. Clearly only suitable for 4WDs, at one point James said, we are currently sand-surfing, I have no control of the car - that filled me with confidence! We stopped a short walk from the gorge, which was quite impressive, then headed back for the journey out. We made it back to the main road and headed on our way. About 5 minutes later we arrived at Toconao, a very
small village and low and behold, to our left was a very accessible and much bigger gorge - oh well, we enjoyed our little adventure.
The altiplano lakes were at 4,300m. Our little car crept slowly up and up and up until we eventually arrived over the brow of a hill to a breathtaking sight. Having only seen rocks, sand and salt for the last 100km it was amazing to see these crystal blue lakes in the middle of nowhere. We tried to pay the entrance fee but noone was there, we had the whole place to ourselves. We walked down to each of the lakes and were surprisingly breathless walking back up to the car. As we were leaving someone appeared from nowhere to ask for our entrance fee, clearly we hadn't been all alone after all.
Our sunset stop was Laguna Chaxa. The lake is home to 3 different types of flamingo and is right in the middle of the salt plains. We were there an hour before sunset so walked up towards the flamingoes. We took loads of photos of the salt and the flamingoes. More and more people were arriving and heading to our
right so we decided to follow them. We had managed to miss the interpretive trail, so followed it backwards then found a building with even more information about the fauna, flora and geology of the area. We now feel very knowledgeable on the subjects of salt plains and flamingoes.
The sunset was nothing special, but the colour the volcanoes changed to was quite amazing - not easily captured on camera though. They all glowed pink until the sun had fully gone down. We returned to our hostel to see if Gabriel had been and he hadn't. We prayed that Cosmo Andino had managed to convince the Germans to change volcanoes. It was a different man in the shop, but he knew the situation and asked why we wanted to climb the active volcano. He explained that although it was active, there was no bubbling and just smoke. You also could only peer over the edge and couldn't climb to the highest point as there were huge crevasses. He said if we wanted to be really adventurous, we would be much better off climbing the 6,056m volcano which was the highest in the area. It didn't take much to persuade
us as we thought if we make it up this one then we can tick the 'climbed to greater than 6,000m' box and not bother climbing Cotopaxi in Ecuador. We were confused when he said there was only one other person joining us but happily paid our money.
We grabbed a quick dinner at La Casona, I was craving some vegetables so just ate sauteed veg and rice - at last a plain meal. We got back to our room about 10.45pm and were just heading to bed when Sylvia knocked on the door and said we had a phone call. James answered and it was Gabriel asking if we wanted him to come back early. Strange time to ring, we were glad we could decline his offer. As we were being picked up at 4am, we had managed to persuade Sylvia to make us some jam sandwiches to take with us which she gave us all nicely wrapped up.
28 November (day 35) - San Pedro de Atacama - geysers, Death Valley and Moon Valley
It was another boiling night in our room (despite being much cooler outside). We woke loads with the dogs barking and
it was a pretty horrid shock at 3.45am when the alarm went. Our pick up didn't arrive until 4.25am, which meant a cold 25 minutes out on the pavement watching the dogs rummaging through the bins, fighting and chasing each other and peeing everywhere.
The journey to the geysers was very uncomfortable at the back of a minibus on a bumpy and very dusty road. We were glad to arrive at 6.20am, although when we stepped outside at minus 2 degrees, we wished we were back in the van. Our tour guide Oscar spoke very good English - no surprise really when it turned out he had been born in England and brought up in London and Newcastle. The first event of the day was breakfast and we were invited to walk round the geysers while they got it ready. James and I soon realised that organised tours might not be for us, when after 2 minutes we were ready to get back in the minibus having seen what we wanted to. The plan was to be there for another 2 hours - we were worried. Breakfast was ham and cheese sandwiches, I was glad for the jam sandwiches
Sylvia had made us. Oscar then took us on a short tour of the geyser field and told us loads of pretty interesting stuff. We were then given free time to wander round. James and I spent most of that time standing in the steam of the geysers keeping warm. I think the main problem was, we saw geysers 30m high in Iceland in August, so these ones which only reached 2m, didn't seem that impressive.
The German couple from yesterday were on the tour and came to ask if we were the ones who wanted to climb the volcano. It turned out Marcel was keen, but his girlfriend Katarin wasn't, so she was very pleased that she didn't have to climb now Marcel could come with us. He asked which volcano we would all be climbing, and was very pleased we had chosen the higher one.
Our next stop was a thermal pool, which meant a slightly cold strip down to bikini in the open air (probably about 2 degrees by now). The pool was hot but not boiling and we kept moving closer and closer to the source of the water to keep warm. Everyone shared
travelling stories and the most useful thing we found out was that Cartagena in Columbia is really nice. Given our new plan of not climbing Cotopaxi will save us some days, we are thinking of heading up to Cartagena to lie on a beach for 8 days before we come home. Exiting the pool was the coldest bit as we only had a small travel towel between us. James went for the stand naked in front of everyone approach, I was slightly more discreet.
Our journey back to San Pedro was at a more leisurely pace. The rest of the bus got very excited at seeing rheas and vicunas (like small guanacos), we slept for most of the journey. There was a 70 year old American on board who had been a professional photographer and had the biggest lens we had seen. He insisted on stopping for every living creature and took hundreds of photos. Oscar pointed out the volcano we would be climbing the next day, it looked very high.
The highlight of the trip back was the Guatin gorge, which has hundreds of cacti, some up to 7m high. We all walked on a trail down
to a waterfall which took much longer than planned due to our 70 year old David Bellamy charachter falling over (luckily without camera in hand). We got back to San Pedro at 1.30pm and while most of the group headed off for lunch together, we politely declined and went back to the same cafe as yesterday. The smoothies weren't as good and the service was really slow but it was nice to relax in the shade for a while.
We had to move rooms as our double room was booked, so we did that then had a nap. We got up at 5pm and went into town to find petrol. Two laps later, we managed to find the road and filled up. We then drove to find the Death Valley, but with no sign, we missed the turn. We spotted some people way out on a hill and drove across boulders to get to them. It turned out to be the Cosmo Andino tour that we were trying to copy. The Germans were on the tour, so we asked directions and headed on our way. The Valley was pretty impressive, with massive sand dunes and unworldly rock formations. We
couldn't stay long as we needed to get to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) for sunset. Moon Valley is so named as the crater surface resembles the surface of the moon (this confused James as he was looking for something moon shaped). We parked up with all of the other hundreds of people and clambered up to the top of an enormous sand dune. We couldn't work out where to sit for sunset so walked the entire length of the ridge and back, obviously passing the Germans on the way, before settling down at one end. The rock colours were impressive, similar to the night before.
We had been instructed to eat pasta and drink lots of water in preparation for our climb so we unoriginally returned to the same restaurant as the night before where James had had a nice plain vege pasta. We haven't done well on trying the different Chilean specialities we had read about, but tonight definitely wasn't the night to be eating anything original. We got back to the hostel by 10pm, sorted our stuff for the morning and went to bed, not convinced that we would be able to sleep given the
heat, dogs and my nerves about the morning's activity.
29 November (day 36) - San Pedro de Atacama - Sairecabur volcano
Another ridiculously early start saw us out on the pavement with the dogs at 5.30am this time. We were feeling far from good and I am not so sure about James, but I was definitely apprehensive about the challenge ahead. Our guide, Ivan, arrived in a 4x4 with Marcel already on board. Unlike Oscar the day before, Ivan didn't speak a word of English. James and I sat in the back letting Marcel chat happily to Ivan in the front. It is embarrassing how much better every other nationality are at speaking different languages.
We tried to get some rest while we climbed higher and higher up towards our volcano. We eventually stopped at our base camp - a tiny hut in the middle of nowhere. Marcel was first out and after a very short walk to use the facilities, he returned saying he felt a bit wobbly. It was my turn next and I felt exactly the same. Ivan was merrily slapping suncream all over his face and James was freezing (only wearing a t-shirt
and thin waterproof) but otherwise felt ok. We asked about food, having not eaten or drunk anything all morning but Ivan assured us food would make us vomit so we left our jam sandwiches in the car. Ivan then gave us a quick lesson on how to walk (normal sized steps, deep breaths, strong legs and relaxed upper body) and with walking poles in hand, we were off.
For the whole climb we stayed in the same order, Ivan, Marcel, me, James. We stopped for our first break after about 20 minutes and looked back down at the car way below us. We asked Ivan how far we had climbed and his answer of only 80m wasn't too motivating. The first part of the climb was along a thin steep path. Although it was hard going as breathing was a bit of an issue, I kept thinking if it carries on like this, I will make the top. Little did we know what was coming. About an hour in, we arrived at the bottom of what I can only describe as a near vertical surface of rocks and shale. Here we were told to leave our poles, to use
hands and feet and to scramble as hard as we could up towards a large rock way above us. We also had to climb up different paths so that the loose stones and rocks which fell down on every step didn't hit the person below. It was here that I was questioning the sense in our decision to make this climb.
I was pretty scared throughout this part of the climb as it was impossible to get a foot hold on anything and every movement up led to a slip back down. After a lot of effort we all made it to the rock. I asked nervously what was ahead and was told that it was easier as the climb was now on bigger rocks, I wasn't convinced. By this stage James was starting to get a really bad headache and the higher we went the worse it got. I felt a bit dizzy but it wasn't getting any worse. Some of the rocks we were clambering up were pretty huge and I was glad I didn't look down too much as the drops were enormous.
Every time we stopped we asked the altitude and when we were
told we only had 20 minutes to go we didn't believe him. We had been told at Cosmo Andino that the last 50m is a massive scramble up shale so I was waiting for the repeat of the bit we had already done. Luckily I had misinterpreted what he said and we had already done the scramble. James told me he felt like he was drunk by this point, but as we only had a bit to go we all powered on and made the summit in 2 hours 20 mins.
Ivan was very complimentary, telling me I was a strong woman, very tough and determined. He congratulated the boys as well but clearly had not expected me to make it. As we took in the amazing views of both Chile and Bolivia, ate our first food of the day (a banana) and took photos of our success, Ivan laid on a rock and slept! After about 20 minutes we decided to wake him up so we could get back down.
We were all dreading the descent, especially the shale wall. Clambering down the large rocks was hard and jarring on all of our joints. I favoured the
sit down and use my arms to swing down approach for most of this part of the descent. James by this point said he felt more drunk than on his stag do and had no control over his legs, this was also not helped by the fact that his calf had been playing up before we even started. He proceeded to fall quite a few times, every time bashing his legs or twisting something.
The shale wall was crazy. Ivan instructed us to slide down the shale/rocks, using our arms for balance. The best way to describe what we had to do was snowboarding down the volcano with no board and on rocks which were very painful if/when we fell over. We both ended up with our shoes stuffed full of rocks which Ivan informed us were very toxic.
The feeling of arriving at the car is hard to describe. Although we were ecstatic to have made it up and back in only 4 hours 20, we were all feeling a little worse for wear and were keen to get back to lower altitude. On the way back down Ivan filled us in on some facts about the
volcano.
He is the only guide to climb this volcano and has climbed it 60/70 times over 20 years
The average ascent time is 5/6 hours
Only about 250 people have made it to the top (very few of them female)
At 6,056m (19,869 feet) it is the highest volcano in the area. As a comparison Ben Nevis is 1,344m (4,409 feet)
About 50% of people give up when they see the shale/rock wall and only 30% who attempt it make it to the summit
After hearing all of this we were even more proud of our efforts. As we got to lower and lower altitude our heads started to pound and we started to feel really tired. James' knee was in agony and we were very keen to get back asap. Ivan's parting advice was to sleep for 30 mins, then shower and eat something. Back at the hostel we decided to extend his sleeping time to 2 hours but as soon as my head touched the pillow it started to pound. It really was agony. We eventually dropped off to sleep only to be woken by the usual hostel noise of loud Spanish people and dogs.
After a shower I felt marginally better but as the rest of the day went on, James started to feel better as I started to feel worse. My head just wouldn't stop pounding. We decided to get some food as we hadn't eaten all day. First we needed cash. It was baking hot and we hadn't properly rehydrated, so the one hour palava that followed which involved walking up and down the high street from the first machine that had no cash to the second which didn't take visa was very uncalled for. We had been told there were only 2 ATMS in town so we changed our remaining Argentinian pesos into Chilean pesos (£3.50 worth) then decided to try the one with no cash one more time. Alas, no luck but the woman there informed us about the third machine which we were relieved to find gave us some money - a 100km drive to Calama and back would not have gone down well.
We celebrated with a mixed juice in our favourite cafe and an empanada and booked a table and an expensive looking restaurant for our celebratory dinner. By 8pm my head was still hurting
but we thought some decent food and lots of water would do the trick. We couldn't resist having some wine to celebrate, especially when we realised it was our last night in Chile. Our dinner of seafood tempura, quinoa and the most bizarre salmon dish ever (with pear, curry sauce and creamed potatoes) was divine.
Back at the hostel, our room had been invaded by flies and was baking hot. Not conducive to a good night's sleep but we were both pretty exhausted and very pleased to be setting our alarms for a very civilised 8am.
30 November (day 37) - To Quito
I still had a headache when I woke up and any sudden movement (eg sneezing) made it pound. Also, we must have ingested some of the sulphur as everything smelt of it - can't imagine what it was doing to our insides. The headache is apparently normal after such a swift descent from altitude but I was expecting the effects to have disappeared by the next day.
We drove back to the airport - at last returning a car with less than the allowed mileage. The day was another crazy flying day. First
we had to fly 2 hours south to Santiago, only to then fly over 5 hours north to Quito. They were showing some comedy programme on the first flight which James found hysterical, at one point I caught him wiping tears from his eyes. Our transit at Santiago involved returning to Dunkin Donuts for a smoothie and then I insisted I needed some hot food so we shared a portion of chips which cost £6 - unbelievable. The second flight was tedious and typically they served a hot meal as soon as we got on board - could have saved the £6. We had to transit at Guayaquil (the business capital of Equador) which involved sitting on a boiling plane for 45 minutes waiting for a new crew and pilot.
When we got off the plane James discovered his water bottle had leaked everywhere, luckily his spare socks had taken the brunt of it. We collected our bags and I headed for the loos - what a bad mistake. Our first taste of Quito was not a good one. The airport was absolutely packed with hundreds of people waiting for people, half of them holding helium balloons. I left James in the middle of the chaos and had to wait 20 minutes in a crazy queuing system. I was very self-conscious as I was at least a foot taller than everyone else and James informs me that the whole of the crowd spent the entire time I was gone staring at him.
On arrival at our hostel, James opened his bag to find my nail varnish remover had leaked all over one of his 3 tops. Clearly, it was a day of leaking things. We headed out for a wander and grabbed some dinner at a place called the Magic Bean.
As our time in Argentina and Chile is now over, we discussed what we liked and didn't like about each place.
What we like about both - the people, restaurants, spectacular scenery
What we don't like about either - dust, blowing our nose and blood coming out, dogs, not being able to put loo roll down the loo
What we prefer about Chile - the roads, seafood, they don't moan when you give them a big bank note
What we prefer about Argentina - meat, snacks, pastries, dulche de leche and ice-cream
We decided the Ecuador has a lot to live up to.
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Jules
non-member comment
Loving it
Many congratulations on climbing the volcano - it looked pretty brutal! Reminded me a lot of climbing Huayna Potosi! Keep the blogs coming :)