Monthly Archives: March 2013

Lush Pucon, Desert Argentina and Donkeys

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Crossing the border into Chile once again was a piece of cake, we know the drill exactly, old hands. The border is on top of a mountain range and when descending into Chile the change in landscape was apparent. Where Argentina was dry, Chile was lush and green, the rain doesn’t make it over the mountains too often. We had read in our guidebook that the area on this border was ‘Mapuche’ area, the indigenous people who are still getting a very bad deal in Chile. We stopped at a small town called Curarrehue where 80% of the people are Mapuche. There is a little museum and a Mapuche restaurant. We had a great lunch here, it started off with sopapillas, assort of deep fried bread with spreads. The bread reminded me much of ‘oliebollen’, a Dutch New Years tradition. For our main Julia had a soup with local ingredients and I had a sort of stew with a large piece of cow meat and a lot of coriander, it was all very tasty.

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The Best of Southern Chile and Argentina

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Our time in southern Chile and Argentina started with our road trip down the rugged and extremely scenic Carretera Austral in Chile and ended with brilliant day hiking from El Chalten in the stunning Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina. Distances between destinations are huge, and you can drive for a long time without seeing anything other than the odd guanaco. Here are our highlights from southern Chile and Argentina, including our favourite accommodation and dining experiences.    Continue reading →

Hard driving days followed by relaxing times in El Bolson

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From El Chalten we drove north, which is going to be our main direction for the next months, always north north north. The plan was to go to Perito Moreno NP, which is supposed to have more beautiful mountains, rock paintings and fossils. Our intermediate stop for the night was Gobernador Gregores a very isolated town as it is hours away from any other places. Surprisingly it had a good feel to it, people were doing sports, it was colourful and the information centre was very nice (we might have been the only visitors of the day). The next morning we did a big shop at the supermarket, only to find out we couldn’t pay for our groceries. Despite the Maestro and Visa/Mastercard logos they wouldn’t accept our debit/credit cards. The one bank they have in this province only wanted to give a small amount of money, but at least we could go back to pay for our groceries and we were on our way.

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Best Hiking Ever – El Chalten

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Our next destination was El Chaltén, the self claimed hiking capital of Argentina. Its most famous attraction being Mount Fitz Roy. The Tehuelche indigenous people called it El Chaltén, which means smoking mountain. Only late in the 1800’s it became clear that the mountain doesn’t smoke, but that there is most of the time a cloud floating around the top.

El Chaltén was 90 kms off the main road (RN40), but it was a beautiful drive. Driving through the boring steppe/pampas landscape towards the looming mountains and massive glaciers in the distance. El Chaltén isn’t the prettiest place on earth, quite the contrast with its surroundings. It is a very new town, founded in 1984 and only in recent years it has started to boom. There are some really nice buildings, but there is a bit of cohesion missing and the town really seems to be in need of decent city planner or local government that cares, more about that later. Tired from a long drive, we headed to La Cerveceria, the micro brewery and had great food. Julia had a salad which was a bit more sophisticated then the typical lettuce and tomato and I decided to try the Locro, which is a local speciality. It’s a stew with beans, corn and various meats, very tasty. All washed away with some pilsner of course.

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