Glaciers are pretty damn COOL!

Surprisingly, the epic bus ride from Bariloche to El Calafate wasn’t that bad.  And thanks to the miracle of drugs (sleeping pills) Keryn even managed to get some sleep.  Fucken a!  We got the big comfy seats again that recline a fair way back, and we got fed lunch, dinner and breakfast, and entertained by a few movies that were actually in English.  Except for Ice Age 3 dammit!  We arrived in El Calafate at about 1pm and found a cheap hostel, then wandered around town.  It’s pretty tiny so there wasn’t much to see, but it’s pretty touristy.  We thought there were heaps of good hikes to do, however after asking at the information centre and the national park centre we found out we were completely wrong.  Well, there were a couple of walks in the national park, but it was expensive to get the bus out there and it just didn’t seem worth it.  So we decided to visit the Perito Moreno glacier and then re-assess our plans.  While we were eating dinner that night, we got talking to an English couple who helped us decide where to go next (and later on in our travels).  They recommended going to El Chalten, which is where we were initially going to go to do some hiking.  And since there wasn’t much else to do in El Calafate apart from the glacier, we decided to go to El Chalten after visiting the glacier.

We’d booked transport to the glacier through our hostel so it was another early start to get out there.  After about 1.5hrs drive we arrived at the Los Glaciares National Park then drove a bit further to the wharf where we got a boat out to the glacier.  We were a bit sceptical about getting the boat, but it was worth it as we got up quite close and spent an hour out there.  Then we drove up to a lookout point, where there were plenty of walkways to get different views of the glacier.  It was amazing, as you could see the entire glacier and get a better idea of just how massive it is.  And despite the fact that it’s one of only 2 glaciers in the world that are actually advancing, not retreating, there were regularly chunks that would fall off into the lake with a thunderous noise.  Annoyingly we never had the camera out at the right time to capture one.  We had a couple of hours at the lookout, and it’s the kind of thing that no matter how long you stand and stare at it, you still can’t get your head around the size and beauty of it.  Amazing.

Even though it's only about 7 weeks since we got to see some live rugby, we went to see the local 7's rugby tournament.  It was good to see grass roots rugby live and well in southern Argentina, and good to be the only gringo's somewhere in El Calafate for the day.

Like sands through the hourglass...these were our days in Bariloche

Despite the unpleasantly early start after our day of drinking, we managed to pack up and make it to the bus station in time for our bus to cross over into Bariloche, Argentina. However, just as it was pulling up, Kurt discovered he didn’t have his passport. Cue frantic searching through all our bags, then a mad sprint for Kurt back to the hostel while I tried to stall the bus leaving. Thankfully everyone else took their time in getting their bags on board, and just when I thought it’d leave without us, Kurt came running back, passport in hand. Thank fuck for that. The bus ride itself wasn’t too bad as we had nice big comfy seats and even got fed lunch. The border crossings were painless and pretty quick and in between the two borders there was an eerie landscape. It took us a few moments to work out what it was then we realised it was the volcanic ash from the volcanic eruption in Chile earlier in the year. Everything was grey and looked like a moonscape. 

Our first full day we didn’t do much, just walked around town and checked things out.

The next day we decided to go for a walk along the lake, and ended up walking a 20km round trip. Unfortunately we couldn’t actually walk by the lake so it was along the road instead and very dusty. There are heaps of stray dogs in South America (thankfully not aggressive) and one decided to befriend us and followed us the 10kms back to town, right to our hostel. It was a big walk so we took it easy for the rest of the afternoon until we had to walk another 5kms or so out to the bus station to buy our tickets to the next place (El Calafate).

Bariloche has been hit pretty bad by a shitload of dust/sand from the Chilean volcanic explosion, which covers the streets and often clouds the views around town. Keryn’s hay fever has been really bad lately and the dust made it even worse so she couldn’t even go outside on the 3rd day.

The day before we left we headed out to Llao Llao National Park for a walk. It was a nice easy walk compared to the two we did in Pucon’s national park, and went around a lake which had good views. However, the view from the top of a lookout over the lake back towards town was obscured by dust which was unfortunate. It was a nice walk though, and heaps of people were hiring bikes and cycling a route around which would have been good too.

We were up at 6am the next morning (see, travelling isn’t all beaches and cocktails) to get the bus south to El Calafate which was going to be a 28hr trip. O for awesome!

Hiking and Drinking

Well that wasn’t too bad – our first 10 hour overnight bus ride in South America.  We arrived in Pucon at about 10am on a rainy, cold day so we had to bust out our jackets for the first time.  Luckily it’s a small town so we didn’t have to walk far to find the tourist information centre and the hostel we’d read about.  As it was a horrible day and we hadn’t had much sleep on the bus, we stocked up on food then chilled out for the rest of the day.

The next morning we were up at the crack of dawn to head out to the Huerquehue National Park for our first hike.  We’d never done anything like this before and weren’t quite sure what to expect, especially since they didn’t have any maps for us to take.  However, the ranger said the track was well marked so off we trudged.  After a relatively easy 30mins we started to go uphill, and this continued for the next 2.5 hours.  At the bottom it was a nice spring day of about 20 degrees, but as we neared the top we found ourselves walking in snow.  It was very picturesque at the top with lakes, streams and stunning native forest, so it made all the panting and sweating worthwhile.

  

 

 

 

 

But this was when things got a bit difficult.  We had planned to do a loop track, however due to the amount of snow the track was nowhere to be seen.  There was a group of other hikers that were caught at the same junction, and luckily they had a map.  Not that it made the path magically appear.  One keen French dude blazed ahead trying to find the track under the knee deep snow, while us and some German girls weighed up the options.  We ended up following the French couple along what we thought was the path, but was actually a stream bed, so we altered course slightly and successfully made our way across to the lake.  No idea where the actual path was, but we made it in one piece.  After our little 6 hour adventure we made our descent down the now very slushy and muddy path, and had a well earned break for lunch by the lake.  It was an interesting and challenging foray into the hiking world, but enjoyable.

We decided to give ourselves a break and explore the town of Pucon the next day.  It’s a very beautiful little town, nestled in between mountains and volcanoes and next to a lake, and is obviously pumping in high season.  We walked around almost every street in town as we felt guilty for not doing anything.  Despite being a small place, we covered about 10km winding our way around all the streets.

  

 

 

 

Day 3 saw us getting up early again to head back out to the National Park to hike another track.  This one was a shorter one (4 hours and 4kms), but was a steeper climb up.  Thankfully there was no snow on the climb up this one, and it was much warmer.  We also appeared to be the only ones doing this particular walk.  Once again, when we got to the top there was snow covering the ground, and once again the track was nowhere to be seen.  But Kurt, doing his best Bear Grylls impersonation, navigated our way around the side of the mountain successfully.  And we didn’t even have to drink our own urine to survive!  After our knee popping descent, once again we had lunch by the lake and lay in the sun until our bus back to town.

After 4 days in Pucon we decided to move onto the next town, Valdivia, which was only 3 hours away.  We didn’t really know much about the place, but our walking tour guide in Santiago had recommended it as she was from there and Kurt wanted to go to a brewery he’d read about online.  The first afternoon we just walked around town to get our bearings and checked out the main attraction in town – the sea lions.  Tick.

 

Day 2 was the main reason for coming to Valdivia – checking out the local breweries.  We caught a local bus about 15kms out of town to a little fishing village, as we’d read that there were about 4 breweries along this stretch of road, and we thought we might as well earn the beer by walking.  We thought they’d be a little more spaced out along the road; however we had to walk 10km to reach the first one, Salzburg Cerveceria.  And of course it was closed.  Thankfully it was only another couple of km’s to the next one – Kunstmann Cerveceria.  Upon our arrival, we were asked if we wanted to see the museum, to which we replied, no thanks, we’re here to drink.  And by that, I mean we mimed drinking.  First we ordered a tasting tray to sample 6 of their beers, which helped us choose the one we liked best.  Then, purely for economic reasons, we ordered a ‘column’ of the Torobayo (an ale), which was over 2.5 litres.  To accompany this much beer we sensibly ordered a starter dish which consisted of various meats and chips.  We ordered the small which was more than enough for both of us.  After all good intentions of walking back into town, we instead opted to get the bus to another pub for yet more beers.  But only because the Salzburg brewery was closed and we had to sample their product.  It would have been rude not to.  And then it would have been rude not to sample a pisco sour or two, which is the claimed national drink of Chile (pisco is actually from Peru).  We weren’t looking to forward to our sore heads and the 8 hour bus ride early the next morning.  But it was worth it.

 

Bienvenidos a Chile!

What a relief to finally arrive at our first scheduled destination.  Caught the metro into town which was easy enough.  It’s clean and efficient and they have a ‘bip’ card which is similar to the Oyster card in London that you can use on both the metro and buses.  If Santiago can have a system like that, why the hell can’t Sydney?  We actually haven’t used our ‘bip’ cards much as we’ve mainly been walking for miles each day, but it’s a convenient and easy system.

When we arrived at our pre-booked hostel, The Green House, we were greeted by our friendly host who was a lovely old man.  He had minimal English, we had even more minimal Spanish, but we all managed to understand each other.  The hostel was nice and cosy and quiet, and in a great central location.  Exactly what we needed after two days travel to get there.  Didn’t do much our first afternoon, just wandered around to have a look and had our first Chilean hotdog.  A very unexpected thing to be popular here, but the Chileans are mad for them.  The basic one is fairly standard, just a regular hotdog in a bun with mustard and tomato sauce, but you can go all out with others that have fresh chopped tomato plus shitloads of avocado and mayonnaise and varying combinations of these.  Then we grabbed a 6 pack of the local Escudo beer for AU$6 and chilled out.

After all good intentions of saying we’d get up at 8am the next day, we slept in til almost 11am.  Clearly we were feeling the effects of travel and caught up on some much needed sleep.  But we didn’t just laze around all day, as we spent the next 5 hours or so walking around the city.  We went to find the central market which was fresh seafood, fruit and veges so that was an assault on the senses.  We wandered the streets checking out some awesome street art and were impressed with how good it is.  At Cerro San Cristobal (San Cristobal Hill), we caught the funicular up to the statue of the Virgin Mary, which had a perfect panoramic view of the city of 6.6 million people.  It’s quite a smoggy city but that’s because it’s in a valley in the middle of the Andes.  We were then on a mission to find a particular restaurant that Anthony Bourdain went to in his show ‘No Reservations’, to sample a lomito.  After about an hour of wrong turns and back tracking (we were determined not to give up), Kurt finally spotted it down a side street.  With a bit of help and patience from our friendly waitress, we managed to order our own tailored lomito’s.  It’s basically a pork sandwich with various toppings.  Keryn had avocado and mayonnaise, and Kurt had the same but with sauerkraut as well.  We’ve posted a picture on Facebook (as well as other photos from Santiago and Valparaiso) which actually doesn’t do it justice.  The cost of two lomito’s, one coke and one beer was about AU$22.  While this is hopefully the dearest lunch we have in quite some time, it was worth the money and the many kilometres walked to find it.  We rewarded ourselves with a few more beers that night and chatted to a Dutch couple who had just arrived at the hostel.  They were at the end of their 6 months travelling around to see the 7 World Wonders, with the last one being Christ the Redeemer in Brazil.  They said Macchu Picchu in Peru was one of their highlights, so it’s made us look forward to that even more.

On our last full day in Santiago we decided to do one of the free walking tours, which wasn’t so free as our guide told us the average tip is AU$10-$20 per person.  It was good though, as we saw a lot of the city that we hadn’t already been to, including the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace and coffee with legs which are coffee shops where coffee is served by women in short, tight dresses to (mainly) men standing at counters.  We also walked around Barrio Bella Vista which is the student area and location of Pablo Neruda’s house, who was a famous Chilean poet.  One thing we’ve noticed while walking around is the diversity in Chileans – Chinese, people of middle eastern appearance, Africans, blondes, redheads, native Mapuches.  It’s brilliant, and we’ve both been wrong more than once in assuming someone was a European tourist when they’re locals.  Kinda strange to hear a curly haired ginga/ranga speaking Spanish.

The next day we got a bus to Valparaiso, which is a city on the coast about 90mins from Santiago.  The population here is about 265,000 people, so it’s noticeably smaller and much more chilled out which is exactly what we were after for a few days.  Most of the city is on steep hills, accessed by funiculars which are all about 100 years old.  They still work fine though!   

We stayed on Cerro Alegre (Alegre Hill) which was the main area for tourists.  We stayed for 3 nights and spent our days walking around the city, and went for a longer walk to the next city around, Vina del Mar.  We were there on a Sunday so not much was open but it was a beautiful seaside walk and we got our first local bus back to Valparaiso.  Oh, we did see a moai (human figure carved from rock) from Easter Island outside the musem in Vina del Mar.  It wasn’t as big as we were expecting, but still quite cool as it’s the closest we’ll get to Easter Island.  Again, there’s a lot of impressive street art in Valparaiso, and there seems to be quite an arty community.  If you ever find yourself in Valparaiso, DO NOT stay in a place called Hostal Color as we had our first, and hopefully last, experience of bed bugs.  Not cool at all, and we’re still experiencing the psychological effects, thinking we can feel things crawling and biting us. Needless to say we were happy to leave that hostel, but we still really enjoyed Valparaiso.  It’s a great place to spend a few days just walking around and doing not much.  We then caught the bus back to Santiago and killed a few hours walking around, and we’re currently waiting for our overnight bus to Pucon, which is a small town of 21,000 about 10 hours south.  We’ll let you know what it’s like!

Airports are fun!

After discovering our flight to Buenos Aires was delayed by 4 hours and sorting it all out on our day of departure, we thought it would be smooth sailing all the way to Santiago.  You might be familiar with the phrase, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.  It all started at the check-in desk at Auckland airport when Kurt had a brief argument with the prima donna behind the desk and was threatened to not be let on the flight.  Thankfully it was only a brief skirmish and we made it through to the next round.  While waiting to board we spotted Ma'a Nonu who was trying unsuccessfully to slip unnoticed through to the priority lounge, but had to put on a happy face for photos with his adoring public.  The flight itself was uneventful - no TVs for entertainment yet again.  12 hours is a long way to go staring at the back of someone's head, so it was lucky we had the laptop to watch movies.  The fun started again on arrival at Buenos Aires airport trying to clear immigration.  Keryn made it through a piece of piss, but because of the reciprocity fee Australia has with Argentina and the confusion around whether we were still in transit or not, it took Kurt 40mins of going back and forth to get through.  We had been told by the airline staff to collect our bags from baggage claim, clear customs and approach the help desk to claim our free transfer, accommodation and food vouchers for our night's stay in Buenos Aires.  Yet again, smooth sailing it was not.  The staff were extremely unhelpful and tried to tell us we were supposed to collect the vouchers before we came through customs, and hoped we'd just disappear.  Tough luck bitches!  After waiting for about an hour we finally received our vouchers and headed off to our 5 star hotel.  It turned out to be the best perk of flying with Aerolineas Argentinas and will probably be the nicest place we stay on our travels.  More fun was to be had at the Buenos Aires airport the next day.  As soon as our boarding gate was announced we lined up for immigration to depart Argentina.  We weren't even halfway through the line when our flight was called, so we followed others on our flight to the front of the line to be rushed through only to be told to return to the back of the line.  If it wasn't for some nice people who were on our flight the night before letting us jump to the front of the line, we wouldn't have made our flight.  Kurt was also asked why he had paid the entrance fee (US$100) as he was technically still in transit.  This is an ongoing discussion we're having with Aerolineas Argentinas.  Thankfully that should be the last flight we have to take for quite some time.  Despite all this, we're in South America and couldn't be happier.  These are the first issues we've had flying anywhere and it won't put us off travelling.