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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El Calafate and Hiking in Torres del Paine National Park

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After our brief stop in Puerto Natales we crossed the border into Argentina and drove north to El Calafate. El Calafate is the most touristic town we’ve visited so far.  It has good infrastructure and facilities for tourists and many fine places to eat and drink.  However it is a busy place to visit after being in the sleepy towns of Patagonia.  It seems to exist primarily because of the Perito Moreno glacier, a stunning glacier in the southern sector of Los Glaciares National Park.  Perito Moreno glacier is unusual because instead of receding it advances at a rate of 2m per day.  It is 30km long, 5km wide and 60m high.  Massive!  Giant icebergs the size of buildings carve off the face of the glacier and collapse into the channel below.  It sounds like a gun going off and is an amazing thing to watch.  To visit it, you walk along a series of boardwalks across from the glacier which allows you to see it from different angles.  This makes it one of the most accessible attractions to visit in Patagonia, probably why El Calafate is so busy! From the town it is really easy to arrange a tour to see the glacier.  We didn’t do this, instead first visiting the glacier on our way to a campsite on Lake Roca, also in the National Park.  We spent a couple of days camping at the lake, before heading back to El Calafate to meet Erik and Nelleke for dinner.  Erik and Richard went to school together and hadn’t seen each other for at least ten years so a good old fashioned catch up was in order. We had a great night out with them! Continue reading →

Ushuaia to Puerto Natales: Wildlife Watching, Car Maintenance and Seeing Wellington Friends

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We spent a few a days in Ushuaia, the most southern city of the world and the southern most point of our trip here in South America.  We did nice hikes from the town and in Tierra del Fuego National Park, visited some interesting museums, and saw lots of wildlife. In short there was plenty to do! Continue reading →

Argentina and First Car Problem

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On the 25th of January we crossed the Argentinean border at Chile Chico to Los Antiguos. Quite exciting as we just had to hope all our paperwork was in order. It got scrutinised, especially the Argentinean insurance and we were there for a while. But eventually we got the green light, after we had thrown out all our fruit and vegetables which you are not allowed to take with you. Los Antiguos is an oasis town and was a breath of fresh air after all the gritty Chilean towns. We struggled to find accommodation as it was busy with tourists, but eventually lucked out on a hostel room where we met some travellers who were on the gringo trail which we were crossing paths with.

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Adventure on the Legendary Carretera Austral

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The Carretera Austral is ranking as one of the world’s ultimate road trips. It runs for about 1240 km, mostly unpaved through the mountains and forest of Northern Patagonia. It was a prestigious project of Chile’s former dictator Pinochet, who started building this road in 1976 (only to be finished in 1996), more for symbolic reasons than common sense as he wanted to have a road that tied the whole country together. The road cost a fortune to build due to the remoteness and harsh climate and 11 workers lost their lives in these 20 years. We planned to do about 750 km of this road as we couldn’t get to the northern end as the limited ferry service was booked full. We also missed the southern end as at the border crossing to Argentina, only Chile has built a road. This meant that after crossing the border we had to cross a river without bridge and some rough terrain, which I was up for, but which hasn’t been done a lot before and after enquiring in Coyhaique and several calls to police in Villa O’Higgins we were told that due to the hot water and melting glaciers, the river was too high to cross by 4WDs, only trucks can go through. So here’s our report of the middle section of the Carretera Austral we drove.

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Some things that are slightly different in Chile

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This is a post about some ordinary day to day stuff that is different in Chile….

In Santiago and various other towns that we came through in middle Chile, we often could smell raw sewerage when walking on the streets. It never gets pleasant, but you sort of get used to it. So when we were driving down the Pan-American Highway (Ruta 5) and stopped at one of the luxurious Copec fuel stations, we didn’t give it much thought when we smelled sewerage. We wanted to have lunch on the lush green lawns and picked a spot where the sewerage smell was less potent, no problem! So we are lying in the grass, sandwich in hand, cold Nesquick in reach, sunny and all good, or so we thought… Then one of the fuel station employees came over and told us we couldn’t eat there. At first we didn’t understand, but then he explained that the reason the grass was so lush and green was because they watered it with the sewerage from the public toilets. End of lunch! Now who waters lawns with raw sewerage!?!? Continue reading →

Chiloé – Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be?

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There were some good things about Chiloé, but we struggled to enjoy our time on the island.  The biggest obstacles were bad value and overpriced accommodation options, sights that were mostly average and tábanos, black flies that inundate the area every year in January.  They made camping on the island quite miserable and forced us to look for indoor options.  We’ve had some black flies while driving the Carretera Austral this week but not nearly as many as on Chiloé. Continue reading →

Valdivia to Chiloé

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We ended up staying in Valdivia for five days, which was good as we got some more paperwork done and collected some hard to find bits to add to our ‘gear pile’ in order to achieve self sufficiency on the road/campsite. We also visited the small Curiñanco Reserve which has four different forest types in a very small area. We were the only people visiting and got a very detailed description on the paths we were to take and what we were to see if we were going to walk clockwise. When finished with that, he did the whole story again from end to start, just in case we wished to walk anti-clockwise, so we felt quite well prepared! He also ensured us that it wasn’t dangerous, no pumas or other big cats, just pudús (smallest existing deer), which we really want to see, but no luck. The park was beautiful, with lookouts over the ocean. We also came across some massive vultures, not the most attractive birds around…

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Camping in South Chile

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The struggles we had to get the car have finally started to pay off.  We spent the last few days camping in scenic spots around Huerquehue National Park and a lake town called Lican Ray.  The camping spot in Huerquehue National Park was amazing!  Maybe one of the most scenic and peaceful spots we’ve camped in (including New Zealand campsites).

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