More on that shortly!

I’m writing this as we travel on yet another bus. After the luxury of 5 nights in one place in Pucon it’s been hard to be travelling around on buses again.  All the seats here have a big recline, and we always end up behind the one person that reclines the seat the whole way back.  It’s a pretty cramped writing space but needs must!

After the wonder of Pucon we headed south to Puerta Varas, a lovely little lakeside town in the vicinity of not one but two volcanoes.  It was really very pretty, with lots of nice little cafes and food trucks. There was even a local Chilean pan pipe/guitar band playing in the Plaza de Armas which we found surprisingly good.  This was just a stopover town to get us to our flight the next day but I’m really glad we went.

The next day was less fun, as it was full of transport: Bus (Puerta Varas to Puerta Montt), bus (Puerta Montt to the airport, after a 2 hour wait in the bus terminal), plane (we met a very nice man from the US with a Chilean wife and had a good natter about all things Chile and US,) taxi (to get into Punta Arenas to get our next stage) and bus (Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales.) It literally took all day but as masters of travel we took it in our stride, and even managed to fit in a delicious pizza and beer before our final bus.

But why did we go through all this? To visit Torres Del Paine in Patagonia, the 5th most beautiful place in the world according to National Geographic.  Located about 1.5 hours from Puerto Natales (which is the nearest town) it’s most famous for the W trek, a 4 or 5 day trek that takes in glaciers and mountains and lakes and much more.  We’d wanted to do this, but as we had no camping gear and the fact we don’t like camping, we decided to instead come down and do a couple of day hikes and explore the town. We weren’t the best prepared for this part of our journey; information on the net is all regarding multi day hiking so we thought it’d be best to get here and find out once we’re on the ground. Plus, most people book their flights, accommodation and their multi day hikes months in advance- this is an extremely popular place. We booked our flights 3 weeks ago. Enough said.

The most famous part of the W is Las Torres (the towers), a series of three mountainous peaks above a lake about 800m up from sea level.  We knew this was available as a day hike and was our itinerary for the first day.  This meant, having gotten to our hotel and to bed about midnight we then had to be up at 6:30 to get a 7:45 bus.  At the park we then had to queue to buy our passes (36 quid for the two of us!) before getting another bus to the start of the hike; this meant we didn’t get to start walking until 11. To top it all off the visibility was really poor, due to the terrible weather.  Nonetheless we ploughed on with smiles on our faces excited for the walk ahead.

The hike itself is split into 3 sections; a steep uphill section, a mostly flat section, then a really steep bit.  I found this to be the most challenging of the hikes we’ve done as my legs were knackered afterwards, but it was really enjoyable.  All the scenery around here is so dramatic and beautiful.  There was also a camp site at the mid way point which served hot drinks which meant when we were suffering on the way back we could recharge with hot chocolate and coffee.

The hike is 25km and labelled as 8 hours but we managed it in about 6 and a half. It took us about 4 hours up, particularly as we were struggling at the top.  The path disintegrated to boulder climbing along with wind and actual snow, and there was a fair amount of traffic- it’s a really popular hike.  We made it though to find this lovely glacial lake at the top. It’s just a shame the towers were partly hidden by cloud cover!

The towers are at the back/right… in the cloud.

We wanted to stay up longer but it was too windy and cold so we clambered down at speed.  We got to the start of the trek again about 5:30. Fortunately, there’s a really fancy hotel at the start which meant we could relax with a beer and a cheese board.

The second day of our stay I’d put my foot down to say I wasn’t hiking; the tickets are a 3 day pass but I was quite happy to have a days rest so we could properly enjoy the day after, plus the weather hadn’t perked up.  As a result we had a nice stroll around Puerto Natales.  Like everywhere in Chile, it’s based on a Lake with stunning mountain scenery in the background.  There were lots of nice coffee shops, bakeries and restaurants and we had a very nice and relaxed day.  It was also valentines day so as a treat I got us take out pizza to have in the room before going to bed early to go hiking again!

Our second and final day of hiking was a bit of a voyage into the unknown. There was genuinely no information about any other day hikes. If you imagine the W route is in the shape of a W, Las Torres is the right hand part of the W: |||.  We decided to do the bottom part of the right hand side for day 2, as we knew how to get there and I’d found a snippet online to say it was meant to be very nice.  We were pros now too; we managed to skip the queue for buying tickets and get an earlier connecting bus which meant we were hiking by 10:20.

We realised that, if we went fast enough, we could do the entire bottom of the W and get a catamaran back to the bus connection at 6:30.  This was certainly achievable and meant we wouldn’t hike back on ourselves. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas.  Although it was (mostly) sunny, I’ve never experienced winds like it before; they were strong enough to push a person over (and I fell over a couple of times as a result).  This made it incredibly hard going and meant by the time we reached the mid point we knew we had to turn back- if we’d missed the catamaran we would have been stranded.  To further the fun, Laura twisted her ankle early on which started swelling and causing her a lot of pain.  Although the walk was very pretty, particularly on the way back, it wasn’t the greatest day of hiking we’ve had by some way.

Rainbow from water whipped up from the lake

I really can’t stress how strong the wind was.  Waterfalls were genuinely going backwards as the water was being blown back up at the drop off.  The top layer of water from the lake was constantly being blown into a cloud causing “rainbow lake” (see photos).  And this is how Laura lost her current sunglasses; they were literally blown off her face and down the side of the mountain to never be seen again.  She was holding the big water bottle at the time and couldn’t react fast enough to catch them.  She was understandably disappointed.  Despite this I certainly had a good time, and I think by the end so did Laura.  We were both ecstatic to see the hotel at the end, and the beer tasted excellent again.

The shuttle back was almost delayed because one of the busses had been blown over (did I mention it was windy?)  The fire brigade (which is entirely volunteer in Chile) had been called, had righted the bus and some people taken to hospital, and they’d sent a replacement shuttle to ferry us back to where the main bus was to collect us.  Although it was now chucking it down with rain the wind had calmed so we felt pretty safe on our journey back!

We both agree Torres Del Paine is not the 5th most beautiful place in the world.  We think it’s probably not even the 5th most beautiful place we’ve been to.  It was however still very very nice and we’re both pleased that we’ve come down here.  Patagonia itself is very interesting- it’s so empty! Laura thought it would be barren (wrong) and I thought it would be full of forests (wrong). It’s mostly just shrubbery as far as the eye can see, a few hills here and there, but mostly nothing.  It’s just empty.  We really are in the middle of nowhere. Did I mention we’re less than 800 miles from Antactica?

We’re now on our way back up to Punta Arenas for 2 nights.  We’ve chosen a place that is a bit out in the middle of nowhere and has it’s own sauna and log cabins, so this should be interesting!  There’s a naval museum in town which has replicas of the Endurance, the boat Shackleton took to the Antarctic when he and his crew were stranded for over a year, along with the boat that rescued it. And Laura has agreed to come too! I may write the next blogpost too to talk about how brilliant it will be hopefully, although there’s a chance it will all be in Spanish.

No more walking please.

Interesting aside: Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are all verbs as well as nouns in Spanish.  Desayuno is “I breakfast”.  I like this.

As Laura aluded to in the last post we’re back on the hiking trail (despite the fact that she has now admitted she over-walked me in NZ!)  The difference is that we don’t have our own van to get everywhere now, and the public transport here is not so good in rural places, like where all the parks are.

Our first destination was San Clemente, a little village about an hour away from Talca, which was a big-ish town that took about 4 hours to get to from Santa Cruz via local then regional bus. It was quite a big transport day.  Only we weren’t just staying in San Clamente, but in a remote countryside place where the owners had to pick us up and drive us for another 30 minutes. We really do stay in some random places!

Fortunately it was well worth the trip. We stayed at Campo Suizo, a little BnB type place owned by a Swiss couple.  We were the only people staying and they could not have done more for us to make our stay amazing.  The food was all brilliant and home cooked, the beds were super comfy and it was a beautiful, remote place to stay.

The reason we’d journeyed this far was to head to “Reserva Nacional Altos de Lircay” to walk Enrilladrilado, an impressive 8 hour walk up hills and mountains to beautiful vista (tons of photos will be coming shortly). The top is a wide expanse with lots of square stones in the floor, and apparently no one knows whether they are natural or man made.

To get there first involved the owners dropping us at a bus stop to get the first bus of the day.  The bus was really old and packed to the rafters; Laura got to sit on the dashboard and I held on any way I could for an hour long bus journey along a mostly dirt track.  Once we arrived we then had a daunting 8 hour hike ahead of us; we’d arrived at 9 and the penultimate bus was at 5.10 which we were determined to get which meant keeping up a brisk pace.  It was a lot of walking, particularly on the way back as Laura’s shoes have been giving her some grief so she was in a bit of pain. She soldiered through though and you’ll be pleased to know we were back for the bus with 20 minutes to spare!

Winning!

I’m not sure how but the walks in Chile are even better than in New Zealand. There’s something incredible about the scale of everything, particularly the mountains which are huge and everywhere.  As it’s nowhere near as well organised it means that it’s a lot quieter too, and the quiet makes the views even more enjoyable.

The next day we were unsurprisingly sore, which we took as an opportunity to get one of the big bus journeys out the way as we went from our remote village, down a huge distance south to get to the lake district.  The intention had been to do almost 10 hours of bus journeys (2 local and one regional), however we had to make a change of plans. After arriving in Temuco, the regional hub, we discovered there was only one more bus to where we needed to go and it was already full.  The handy Rough Guide book we’ve been using pointed us to a nearby BnB, which actually ended up being a homestay.  Temuco is a nice city from what we got to see and we had a great dinner so it wasn’t a complete waste.

We got on the first bus the next day to Melipueco, a small town near to Conguillo National Park, and the stunning llaima volcano.  Despite it’s remoteness (1.5 hours direct, 2.5 hours via local bus with Chileans leaning over your seat and playing music from their smartphones out loud) it’s an exceptionally pretty place and we think this is what Switzerland would look like. Lots of wood!  Alas, due to our missed connection the night before we couldn’t go hiking on the first day so we took the opportunity to catch up on admin- school applications and such like.  It was nice to have a relaxed day and we had some lovely home cooked food- there were no menus, the chef just told us what was available.  Our Spanish is still far from perfect, but we understood “salmon” and “lasagne” (they’re the same!) so that’s what we had. Delicious!

Today though, we finally got to go hiking. There’s no public transport to this park so we had to pay someone to drive us out and back again, a 2 hour round trip.  We were hiking “Sierra Nevada”, labelled as a 6 hour hike which we managed to knock out in just over 4, which allowed us to do MORE WALKING!  Joking aside, I’ve really enjoyed both these walks, possibly even more than Laura.  The vistas have been amazing, and on our 2nd walk today we got to go on a volcanic black sand beach which was a treat.

Cheeky volcano in the background

Laura heading to Sierra Nevada

Volcanic Black Sand Beach

We have however made one faux pas; we didn’t bring enough cash and the solitary machine is out of money.  We’ve got enough for accommodation and a bus out of town, but we’re currently eating a dinner of crackers and chocolate spread!  We’ll be making up for it tomorrow by going for steak.

We’re almost at the end of our week in Viña del Mar learning Spanish. We’re very tired, and somewhat surprisingly, we aren’t fluent in Spanish. We are certainly much better than we were at the start of the week though.

Classes are from 9 until 1 in the morning, although they were in the afternoon on the first day for some reason.  There are two lessons; 9-10:45 is the conversation lesson, and 11-12:45 is grammar.  We can’t really tell the difference, except that our first teacher rarely speaks any English. Otherwise we’re still conjugating verbs like in GCSE!

The classes are certainly interesting. There’s 4 of us in the class which is a nice number and there’s a good range of abilities.  We have a workbook which we sometimes go through, and there’s a lot of conversations where the teacher asks each of us a question in Spanish and we have to respond.  This is the part me and Laura really wanted from the course as we just need enough to survive around South America for our time here. One of the people in our class is here for 3 months just to learn Spanish which is very impressive!

All in all, I think we’d like to stay for another couple of weeks as we’re starting to get it now, but we haven’t got the time and need to get moving. We also wouldn’t want to stay in Viña for that long (let alone 3 months!) It’s a seaside town with very little going for it.  It has a few nice cafes and cake shops but really doesn’t feel like it has much soul.  We haven’t done much whilst we’re here; mostly study and nap (which has been nice.)

We did go out for one meal (we mostly cook to save money) which was great. I had steak which was delicious, and Laura ordered a Spanish style Tortilla which was approximately the size of her face and which we had to have most of it to take out.

We also walked along the beech today to the next town (6km away) which was lovely, although we did get sunburnt slightly.  We’ve not been getting any more tanned/burnt for the last few weeks so were caught by surprise by the suns strength.

After tomorrow we’re heading to the Central Valley and wine country, followed by some hiking. Sounds just like NZ all over again- Laura can’t wait!!

We’re in South America!

We’re over half way through our travels! How did that happen?

First things first; we’re massively jetlagged. There’s a 16 hour time difference with NZ, and we got to travel over the dateline which was very exciting; we landed in Santiago before our flight even took off.  Doctor Who has nothing on us.  Either way, the time difference has hit us hard. We tend to be ok falling asleep but wake up again at 1:30am, and can’t normally sleep till 5am or so.  It hasn’t been conductive to long days of exploration (we wake up about 11 normally.)  On the plus side, we’re in an AirBnB apartment which has been amazing. We’ve been able to cook (cheap and means we can stay in on an evening) as there’s a kitchen, and it’s a lovely little place which has been nice to chill so we’ve been here a fair amount.

Santiago itself is lovely.  It has a very European feel about it and is quite similar to Barcalona.  It’s in a grid system like NY which makes it easy to navigate around, and it does have an underground system although we’ve only had to use it once as pretty much everything is walking distance.  The weather is consistently in the high 20s and I don’t think we’ve seen a single cloud whilst we’ve been here.

Nice juxtaposition of new and old at the Plaza Del Armas, the main square

One of the main areas we’ve had issues is language. Almost no one speaks English here, which is a brand new concept on our travels.  We’ve managed to struggle through with a mixture of google translate, talking loudly and slowly, and applying the little Spanish we know, but we really need to get better.  Fortunately we’re taking a week to go on a language course next week.  Laura was surprisingly unimpressed that I managed a full conversation with a shopkeeper to get our phones topped up, including real Spanish phrases such as “Quieren Recargas” and managing to say my phone number in Spanish.

The architecture is particularly nice. There’s a wide mix of stuff; a lot of very old church architecture, some very British buildings, and a smattering of brand new skyscrapers.  There’s lots of cobble roads and pedestrian only areas.  There’s also a lot of graffiti, varying from lovely art to ugly tags.  Each road is interesting and different though.

Food has been good so far. We’ve been eating the South American special of Empadanas every day, which are effectively a variation on cornish pasties. They’re delicious, and they only cost 1 pound.  There’s 1000 Chilean Pesos to the pound which makes conversion nice and easy.  Wine is super cheap (3-4 quid a bottle) as is most supermarket food.  Nothing has seemed too pricey yet other than accommodation which bodes well.

Very Jetlagged but happily with Cheese and Pastry

We spent yesterday at the museum of memories, dedicated to remembering what happened during the regime of Augusto Pinochet.  Some terrible atrocities occurred, but it was a very interesting museum and even managed to keep Laura engaged for 4 hours.

Laura in the lovely Bella Vista area of Santiago, full of nice restaurants and coffee places

Today we went up Cerro San Cristobal (literally, San Cristobal Hill.) Most of Santiago is flat, except for a couple of big hills (outcrops of the near by Andes.) At the top of the hill (a 300m climb) is a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary which looks out over the city.  It was a hard slog as we had to go during the peak heat of the day (damn jetlag!) but there were incredible views all around the city. It’s absolutely massive!

It’s only half 6 but we’re already in Pyjamas ready to fall asleep, hopefully.  Tomorrow we must leave the Sanctuary of our flat to go to Valparaiso, about an hour and a half west of Santiago on the coast.  May the adventure continue!