San Pedro de Atacama - Day 2

Another action-packed day in the form of "Day 2 in San Pedro". This time it was sand-boarding and climbing to the top of a mountain to view the Valley of the Moon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_de_la_Luna_(Chile)).

Sand-boarding was great. However, it affected "Day 3 in San Pedro" since I couldn't sit down properly for the whole day, which is particularly difficult when you're rattling around in the back of a 4x4 speeding over rocky desert tracks. Falling down when sand-boarding is painful, but not as painful as trying to perform basic movements the following day.

Photo taken of Boysters seconds before wipeout

The Valley of the Moon (top) didn't particularly look like the surface of the moon. Maybe Mars as it looked more red than grey as the sun set. However, it was absolutely beautiful, made even more so by the pisco sour (or two) that we were supplied with (something of a ritual it seems with the tour group that we are using).

San Pedro de Atacama - Day 3

I have been overusing the word 'highlight' quite a lot recently, but San Pedro is proving to be one.

Day 3 in San Pedro was seeing the El Tatio geysers, taking a skin-meltingly-hot natural bath and seeing a cacti-filled canyon. All this in a tour of only five people (including us, the guide and two other Chileans). It was great.

The pre-dawn wake-up calls are coming pretty commonplace, so we thought nothing of the two-hour 4x4 up to the geysers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Tatio) at 4,200m above sea level.

It makes you think what is going on beneath your feet as you wander around a huge area filled with steaming holes in the ground bubbling with boiling water. It's also bloody freezing, so there's the temptation to jump into one! That's until the sun comes up and then it becomes absolutely boiling and the Alpaca gloves, hat and jumper (yes - we've bought those) come off and you're in flip flops and a t-shirt. This whole desert is a place of extremes.

As the day progressed, I found myself trying to imitate photographer Anton Corbijn (http://www.corbijn.co.uk/frameset_photo.htm). There's something about black and white photography and deserts that really works (well, I think so). Below is the cactus field that we visited on our way back, passing through a stunning canyon full of Cardon cacti (one of which is apparently a thousand years old and stood 12 metres high).

We also stopped at this beautiful little church (below) in a tiny little village (now nothing more than a stop for the odd coach tour) called Machuca.

However, the natural hot spring was pretty amazing. It was just the five of us and a boiling hot natural spring. At more than 4,000 metres above sea level it also meant that getting out gave the mother of all head-rushes.

PS - someone in the hostel is reading Kerry Katona's "autobiography." Is this allowed?

San Pedro de Atacama

Gemma with me in the palm of her hand (physically and metaphorically)

Arrived in San Pedro de Atacama early yesterday morning following a fairly awful 18-hour bus ride.

It really feels like we are in the middle of nowhere - miles and miles, hours upon hours of desertwith the odd small town / meterological observatory (there seem to be a lot of them) along the way. Last night I have never seen the stars so clearly.

Within hours of arriving we took a minibus from nowhere to somewhere slightly further out from nowhere to swim (or rather float) in a salt lake, lark around in a slightly less salty lake, and drink pisco sours next to a salt flat.

Seeing La Serena

Spent the past day and a half in La Serena, following a 7-hour bus ride (we're getting quite good at this travelling thing).

It's a nice town / city with not a huge amount to do apart from walk around and gawp at the large number of churches...there's also more people playing panpipes than Yeovil town centre.

Tomorrow...it's San Pedro de Atacama, which looks set to be a bit like Pucon - i.e. lots of action (and the ongoing disappearing act of our pesos).

The moment I contracted rabies...

La Serena, Chile

Brits abroad

The journey so far...

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Vina del Mar and Easter Island...in a day

Spent the day in seaside holiday town, Vina del Mar, a 15-minute bus ride from Valaparaiso. The weather was beautiful and we spent a couple of hours chilling out on the beach, surrounded by stray but friendly Chilean hounds (they are everywhere in Chile / Argentina and Gemma has made friends with approximately 98.8% of them) and seaweed that resembled massive rubber cables?!

Feeling culturally starved we headed to the Fonck Museum, which houses various artefacts from Easter Island and other early civilisations (including the Mapuche from the southern tip of South America). It also included one of the original stone heads (or moai) from the island. That's almost as good as going to the place itself, right? Good.

"Valpo"

Valparaiso is a world heritage site...that smells of cat pee.

It is beautiful, with its cute corrugated-iron houses and its street art. But it's also a place where the little houses on the hill meet the huge shipping port at the sea front and the walls if they are not brightly coloured seemed to be daubed in graffiti.

For now it seems like a nice place to spend a few nights and hang out after the adventures of Pucon. But it has felt a little bit of an anticlimax. Maybe more of its charms will be revealed tomorrow.

Check out the UNESCO website for the worst photo of Valparaiso ever - http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/959.

Valparaiso

Have arrived in Valparaiso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valparaiso) and everything seems extremely positive.

The travellers' checklist has all boxes ticked:

• ROOF OVER HEAD: We have managed to rent a three-bedroom flat! To ourselves! With a balcony! So it's definitely going to be a four night stay here. No doubt.
• FOOD SUPPLY: There is a huge supermarket down the road of Asda proportions (hell if you lived here because traffic seems a bit crazy and we're right next to the car park, but as a couple of backpackers on a shoestring it's a definite bonus).
• PLEASANT SURROUNDINGS: We're by the sea, the sun is shining and there's a beach.
• ON BUDGET

:)

6 hours in Santiago

Obama arrives tomorrow which explains the groups of a dozen policemen on every corner and a gaggle of anti-American protesters in the centre.

PS This blog post has to be quick as the waiter has unplugged the restaurant refrigerator to power the laptop - considerate but awkward.

Climbing an active volcano - Villarica

Climbing an active volcano is an experience on a number of levels:

1. It is unforgiving - you spend hours walking up (about 4) without ever really having any flat bits to get your breath back...and it's 3 km high
2. The views are amazing all the way up - Villarica stands out as it is so much higher than anything else nearby. We were also lucky as the weather was clear (obstructed only by the sulfurous smoke from the volcano itself) which meant that we could see for miles and miles
3. The closer you get to the top the more difficult it gets - it gets steeper, the sulphur gets stronger and you get tired-er
4. The fear of falling into a bottomless, smoking pit at the top means that everyone walks funny
5. The thick powdery snow made it easy to pick up speed on the way down using the medium of the arse

Argentina into Chile

We are currently in a nice little town called Pucon nestled in the Chilean Andes in the shadow of a large smoking volcano called Volcan Villarica.

The passed few days have been fairly action packed - over and above the usual travelling (about 10 hours of bus to cover a distance of about a centimetre on the map) we have been: riding in the steppe of Patagonian; mountain-biking around the lake district outside of Bariloche; and taking zip-lines through the Andean rainforests.

Bariloche was nice - full of chocolate shops and steak restaurants. A bit too cutesy perhaps? It was also where we did horse-riding - a definite highlight of the trip. The whole experience felt so personal that it actually hurt when we were shown the guestbook at the end and saw pages upon pages of people's comments and praise of the place.

We were taken to a small little house that the guy had built himself - a wooden and stone lodge overlooking a beautiful patagonian valley. The son took us out on the horses (where the talk moved towards ownership of the Falkland Islands or Islas Malvinas) before sitting down with the family as the mother cooked a meal. It was a real highlight.

More exercise came in the form of mountain biking around the smooth country lanes of the Circuito Chico and taking in the various lakes and a huge hotel at Liao Liao that wouldn't look out of place in Austria as a former dictator's hideout.

Then...onto Chile. What we had initially thought would be a five hour trip across the Andes (which were absolutely stunning - a lot like the Pyrenees) turned into the bus being emptied of all the passages and luggage at the Chilean boarder as we had a sniffer dog sniff around our luggage, and put through an X-ray machine. Talk about a drama. Some people / criminals were pulled aside for attempting to smuggle through some cheese sandwiches.

We finally arrived in Pucon, after a three hour stopover in Osorno. Pucon is all wooden houses and tourist offices. They are everywhere and all offering adventure outings of every kind - zip-lining through the canopy was another highlight - 30 metres up zipping from tree to tree at speeds of up to 70kph! - even the Israeli's were having a good time!!)

We have also managed to squeeze in a couple of hours at a Termas - or hot spa, which was hot and which we had alone (along with about 50 - 60 other Israelis). Memories of Japan came flooding back. ii desu ne!

Other things:

1. ISRAELI UPDATE - they have officially taken over South America. Where are all the Brits, let alone South Americans?
2. SPANISH - Perfect and imperfect tense is hopefully mastered with a sprinkling of the future tense. Forming the subjunctive, however, is proving a little bit tricky. Indicative? So last week.
3. The Volcano alarm went off yesterday - turns out it always goes off at noon. How we laughed.

Pictures to come - internet is painfully slow...

27 hours...

Some more pictures

Budget update

We're exactly a quarter of the way through the trip and we've managed to spend half our budget.

Shit.

Patagonia is vast

Yesterday we finished our five day trek across some of the most surreal landscapes at the Torres del Paine, Chile. Tomorrow we're looking at a 27-hour bus ride from El Calafate to Bariloche - there's pretty much nothing in between and it's not even halfway up Argentina.

The trekking was pretty tiring, covering more than 40km going up and down rocky paths around the Torres del Paine. We camped, we cooked over a little stove, ate watery rice, spaghetti (again watery) and watery hot chocolate. We also walked...and walked.

Overall it was definitely worth it. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking and the weather was pretty good. Throughout our five-day trek we had one morning (at the end) when it rained, and the rest of the time it was pretty good - cloudless skies.

We climbed up to the Torres del Paine on the first day - daggerlike mountains in the centre - scrambling up bolders to get there. Day 2 - was taking in the lakes and the endless wilderness beyond; day 3 - the forests, waterfalls, small glaciers, avalanches; day 4 - the final overview and the long walk round the other base camp; day 5 - midnight patagonian mice eating our food, climbing all over our tent and then taking the boat and then bus home.

The bus to and from Torres del Paine - the high / lowlights:

1. People paid a lot of money to get on a bus from El Calafate, Argentina to go five hours to Chile, to then sit on a different bus and be shuttled around the Torres del Paine for five hours, before being changed to another bus and driving home for another five hours. 15 hours on a bus...out of choice!
2. Chilean passport control is insanely over the top - we were in the middle of nowhere in a small Patagonian border town / village and we had our bags x-rayed. We were not allowed to take any fruit or fresh food across from Argentina and our names had to be presented in advance to the customs officials by the bus company. Going back to Argentina? A cursory look at the passport and a stamp.
3. Tour guide - "To the left is the patagonian ostrich - the adult can run up to 50 kilometres per hour, the baby can run up to 500." A genuine highlight.
4. The bureau de change at the border control in Chile had the worst exchange rate ever - Johnny Foreigner walks out £30 - 40 lighter having attempted to change £150 worth of notes into Chilean pesos. Chile is even more expensive than Brazil (it's up there with Switzerland).
5. Personal knowledge of Israeli history and home affairs is fast outgrowing that of South America. There are so many Israelis here.

Radio silence

It's going to be an early start tomorrow (5.30am!) and another fairly long bus trip down south to the Chilean border and across into the Torres del Paine (The Towers of Pain) national park.

The area is meant to be stunning and up there with the Inca trail in Peru. So we have decided to brave it and take five days and four nights to hike the 'W' trail around the area and do some camping.

Not sure whether we are going to have a good time or enter into a 'World of Paine' (sorry). The weather is meant to change pretty quickly - apparently you can get all the four seasons in one day.

So we'll be off the blog for a bit...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torres_del_Paine_National_Park

Perito Moreno glacier

The Perito Moreno glacier is up there with Iguazu Falls.

It is absolutely massive, and like, Iguazu Falls you see a section from one bit and then not realise that you are missing a whole section until you take in the full overview. Similarly, it was touristy, but done well - the tourist boats don't get in the way of a good photo and nor do the tourists.

We were told that the glacier is 60 metres high and more than 30 km in length. It's pretty massive! I'm not sure the photos do it justice.

We did a tour to get here which actually worked out well. We were bused out earlier this morning, crossing the vast expanses to get to the glacier.

The boat out to the glacier meant that you could see it looming over you (but difficult to get perspective, what with the large lakes and surrounding mountains). We then headed up to the panoramic viewpoint where you could really see the full scale of the glacier.

We're currently staying in a place called El Calafate, which is in the middle of nowhere.

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The glacier is the massive bit of white that meets the lake at the end of route 11.

El Calafate itself is a bit of an oasis in the middle of wilderness and desert - large beech trees and actual grass! There is really nothing outside of the town, huge open expanses with barren mountains and huge plains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perito_Moreno_Glacier

Update

Headin' dahn saff