The big trip

South America, the belated blog entry.

Ok, apologies for the late entry. I'm just lazy like that.

Back all the way to Santiago....

Santiago

So, we landed in Santiago, Chile, a country that maintains an optimism over an underlying melancholy post-earthquake. But don't worry...

"Smile, life is not a sh*t"

We stayed a few nights in a hotel in the 'Paris-London quarter' (feel free to find amusement there). A nice hotel, well located to be a base to see a lot of the colonial architecture of Santiago. We slept well, despite the couple having very loud sex next door constantly (Santiago it seems, is the city of love. Or at least animalistic and, lets just say, highly verbal lust).

View from our balcony

Paris-Londres quarter

While I had a lie-in, catching up on the jet lag, Emmie went in the morning to see an old friend of hers from Bristol who is currently living in Santiago. Later, went to see one of the houses of the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, located in the bohemian quarter called Barrio Bella Vista. He built his house in a 'maritime' style, and filled it with an eclectic collection of trinkets. Much of the items of value had already been taken by the Pinochet army, but a lot remains. His house also has a great emphasis on bars and dining (as in the classic 'Ode to the Artichoke'... go figure) - he was a bit of an entertainer, and hosted many famous friends in the intellectual/artistic circles of the time.

Poster

In front of the Pablo Neruda house

Near Bella Vista

Bella Vista graffiti

Bella Vista by night

Santiago, for a big city, is quite friendly. Spot the bus driver who decided to smile for the camera, or the pair of students who wanted to pose for a picture. I didn't have the heart to tell them I was trying to take a picture of a building.

Smile for the camera

Er, okay then...

Barrio Brasil, cathedral

Artists, at Barrio Bella Vista

"Frequent use of this bar can provoke bohemianism"

Pucon

After a couple of days of relaxation in Santiago, it was time to hit the road again. We took a (surprisingly comfortable) bus down to Pucon, and Patagonia. Pucon is a cute little town with a picturesque lake that is most famous for two things - natural hot springs and its proximity to an active volcano in Villarica. I don't mean active in the sense of a bit of smoke and maybe some sulphur fumes, I mean active in the sense of recently erupted and still glowing with burning hot larva from the top. So, of course, we had to climb it.

We stayed at hostel Donde German, which is ironic both in the sense that the owner, German, is not German, and that he is a big guy who is always around so you can't really miss him. Once we got over the 'somewhere just east of France' jokes, we booked our trip and he provided us with full glacier hiking gear... that is, crampons, ice-pick, gaiters and what seemed to be a radiation suit. The next morning we were off. Unfortunately there was too much fog making the ascent too precarious so we had to try again the next day.

Donde German (he's behind the sofa...)

Behind the house

Pucon's lake

Man's best friend

After the short bus ride to the base of the volcano, we assessed the weather again. Our guide Oscar suggested that it was possible but the wind conditions would make it a tough climb, especially since the chairlift that normally cuts an hour off the climb was out of order. Ah well. We set off with one other climber, Tristan, a californian. The climb took around 5 hours, during which I must admit the idea of bailing out did cross our mind, particularly when Emmie almost got blown off her feet by the wind, but we stuck with it, and our tiredness was overtaken by the excitement of putting on the crampons and climbing up the ice at the half way point. At the top we were awarded with the incredible views, a sense of achievement, and the rare opportunity to look into a pit of boiling larva (albeit briefly since everytime the wind changed the sulphurous fumes caused everyone to run for cover). After a quick lunch in which we couldn't feel our fingers from the cold, we took the short way down, which involved sliding down the ice on our butts, trying to slow ourselves down using our ice picks. 5 hours up, one hour down. Once we got back to the hotel we finished off the evening relaxing our tired muscles in the hot springs looking at the stars...

Villarica volcano by day from our hostel

Villarica volcano by night

Oscar the guide, Emmie and I, wishing the chairlift to work

On the rocks...

... and on the ice ...

... and on the ice some more ...

... until we reached the crater ...

... and looked down it!

Puerto Montt, Chiloe, Hospedaje Betty

On the way down Patagonia, we skipped the cuter more tourist friendly city of Puerto Varas in favor of the less visited, if slightly greyer and more industrial city of Puerto Montt. We stayed at Hospedaje Betty. Betty is 83 years old, and is still running a homestay. She is of part German ancestry, and built the house with her late husband. A devout evangelical christian, she attributes both her good health and the fact that her house is one of the only ones in the area to have never been damaged by earthquakes, to her belief in God. We spent a couple of days there, eating every day at the same cafe (Billy Paul moment), which served great local seafood, and we used Puerto Montt as a base for a quick visit to Castro in the isle of Chiloe, an island with a very unique local culture and interesting local legends, including the dwarf that enchants young women and impregnates them (sounds like a bit of an excuse to me... "it wasn't the milkman, it was the evil dwarf... honest, dad!")

Castro

Betty

Bariloche and horses

From Chiloe, we did a brief stop at Betty's again, before crossing the border to Argentina and continuing on to Bariloche. Since we had long been out of the habit of booking hostels in advance, we ended up in a cute hostel that unfortunately had only one room free, which was basically like a cupboard built on top of the living room that you had to enter with a step ladder. You could barely sit up in it, thats how low the ceiling was. We called it the 'hobbit hole'. Fortunately we changed room the next day...

The Hobbit Hole

The Kitchen

The living room

The hostel made great pancakes for breakfast, and the next day we started to get a feel for Argentina. A bit similar to Chile, but with more of an Italian feel, including the slightly vain European dress sense. We booked ourselves on a horseriding trip, which was just for one day (tourist inflation made it also European priced, so we had to economise a little). However, it was one very full day. We got picked up by Carole and Guillermo, and driven to their ranch, where they chose horses for us (we were a group of 8). I had never ridden a horse before, and much to my horror I was given an enormous male, called Buey (which means Ox... how reassuring). Fortunately she chose well since he was a gently giant and we got on well. The great thing about horse trekking is that you can reach places that have really no infrastructure, since you don't need a road. So, we rode out into the distance, with the Argentinian plains all around us. We stopped to have lunch, which consisted of beef cooked on an open fire and red wine. Nice. On the way back I realised that Emmie was having less of an easy time controlling the young filly she was riding, which took it upon herself to ride off away from the group ignoring Emmie's direction completely. Fortunately, Emmie wasn't thrown and Guillermo got the horse back in line eventually, but it shook Emmie up a little.

Carole's ranch

The Ox and I

The plains

The barbecue

Carole

Emmie's filly

End of the trip

Happy horses

Man and his horse

El Bolson

2 hours by bus south of Bariloche, we arrived at El Bolson, a cute town with a slightly hippy touristy bent. A place where you walk through a touristy crafts market while people with dreadlocks play djembes. If you are an 18 year old north american white girl wearing a bandana who wants to buy a cheap necklace of beads then this is the place for you. We stayed at another hospedaje run by a nice lady. She had a box full of small kittens outside our room, which we decided to bring inside our room to keep them warm in the patagonian autumn but also for general cuteness. They only pooed on the floor once.

Kittens

El Bolson

El Calafate and Perito Moreno

El Calafate is another tourist town, larger than El Bolson and famous as a point from which to do a trip to the Perito Moreno Glacier. It has some great, if slightly expensive, cafes to hang out in where you can get proper coffee. The glacier itself if the largest glacier you can see without being a mountaineer. It is also one of the few advancing ones. Periodically, a lump of ice the size of a large building will fall into the sea with a resounding crash like a thundercrack. Visiting in autumn is, despite the cold, an even more aesthetic experience, with the colours of the autumn leavings contrasting nicely with the brilliant blues of the ice. We started by taking a boat trip across the face of the glacier, which gives a good sense of the sheer magnitude. It is one of the most impressive sights in Patagonia and well worth a visit.

Perito Moreno Glacier

Forest around the glacier

Waiting for the bus

Puerto Natales, Torres del Paine

Puerto Natales is a small town that is a lot less developed than El Calafate. Fewer tourists seem to make it down here, particularly since we were getting towards the end of the summer and it was starting to get too cold for trekking. We stayed at a nice hostel called Isla Morena, which had its own little library and a (rather nice) guitar lying around. It was run by a young couple, Paula and xxxxx. Emmie got on well with Paula, but really I left her to it, since my spanish wasn't really up to having the deep conversations. You can read about that in Emmie's blog if you care to translate the French.

The town was full of dogs and cats. Some stray, some owned, some occassionally cared for communally by the locals. We found a group of kittens that were being looked after by a dog. Cute, but one of the kittens was a bit too attached to the dog and was having an identity crisis - following him around, trying to mark trees and displaying an assortment of unfeline behaviour. We also met the local 'cat lady'. There is always one old lady that lives with a house full of cats. Fortunately she wasn't, as in the stereotype, a raving lunatic.

We had to curb our original plans for a 4 day trek in Torres Del Paine due to the weather. We were already getting strong, icy winds in Puerto Natales and the locals advised us that when the wind blows in the town there is a hurricane in the national park. However, we did a day excursion so we could still see it without too much walking.

We started by visiting the cave of the Milodon, a prehistoric sloth that has been extinct for 10,000 years. Its bones were discovered in this cave and it has since become a bit of a local emblem. It was the size of a bear. The enormous cave itself looks pretty empty now, but has a surreal landscape of stalactites and stalagmites. The landscape of Torres del Paine is a picturesque hybrid of semi-desert and mountains. Not unlike Tibet, but perhaps not quite as extreme. Instead of regular yak appearances, we got wild llamas, which we could actually get quite close to. Emmie even got approached by a curious Patagonian fox. Towards the end of the day, we reached the Lago Gray glacier.

Milodon Cave

Llamas

Torres del Paine

The famous 'W'

Lago Gray glacier

After Torres del Paine, we debated about how far down Patagonia we were willing to go. We had delayed our flights so much that it was the end of the tourist season and the weather was just getting too inhospitable to go as far as Ushuaia, as much as the box ticker in me wanted to see the 'end of the world' (although I think there is a town further south, but I digress...) Also, Paula told us that the atmosphere in Tierra del Fuego is very dark and unhappy, largely due to the mass slaughter of the indigenous people in the region. We decided to make our way back to El Calafate, and took an internal flight to Buenos Aires, earlier than we had planned to take more advantage of Peru than just Macchu Picchu.

Buenos Aires

Going back to more sane temperatures, we took advantage of the comforts of the city for a bit. We visited some famous cafe's, and we indulged in a nice dinner at a famous Argentinian restaurant. I went for the local delicacy, which is intestine. Tastier than it sounds, although somewhat chewy when it cools down. There, we met a young argentinian-reunion couple (as in the French colony), with whom we debated the pros and cons of Brazilian women (pro: they wear very little at the beach. con: the really large ones also wear very little at the beach.) We arrived just in time for their 'legalise marijuana' day, and we spent some time at a famous local cafe, Cafe Tortoni, Plaza de Mayo and the cemetery that keeps the grave of Evita. We saw street Tango dancers, street jazz musicians and street capoeira dancers, and sat on the lawn watching a local folk guitarist doing his thing at the market at Quartier Recoleta.

Buenos Aires