Rolo on Tour

Having relaxed enough I continued my trip and chose the city of Ushuaia as my next destination. It is situated on the island Tierra del Fuego and known as the southernmost city (everything further south they say does not count as a city…) in the world and therefore likes to call itself „Fin del Mundo/The End of the World“. Well it did not feel like that, rather like Christmas, as there was lots of snow (but not enough to go skiing 🙁 ).

Happy because of the snow

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart…

Going further south would have been a little bit complicated, so the direction was north again. As all of the northern part of Tierra del Fuego belongs to Chile that meant crossing 2 borders to stay within Argentina. As a result I had to show my passport 8 times (2+2 times at the borders, twice to buy a bus ticket and 2 police controls in the bus) that day, a new record. But it was worth it in order to visit the impressive Perito Moreno Glaciar nearby the town El Calafate:

Attention: Don’t collude with this iceberg, please

View of the Glaciar from the boat

I guess I just don’t like obeying rules I don’t understand…

Further north lies Bariloche, also known as the Switzerland of Argentina. Well, I did not feel like in Switzerland, but of course that is an absurd statement to make as I have never been there knowingly. Also, interestingly a couple of days later after leaving that place a volcano lying nearby called Puyehue had an eruption causing some problems in that area, so it was good to already have left the place…

Back in the smog of Santiago to meet „old“ (that means, we met 1-2 months ago ;-)) friends we went rock climbing. And it appeared that it was not one of my strengths – I even got the nickname „la gallina“. But more importantly everybody had a good time and that is all that counts.

Moving on up

Flexibility helps 

goooooood

I enjoyed it a lot that between all this rushing from one place to another I could have a kind of „normal“ everyday life for a while . You could call this maybe a holiday from backpacking.
But as always there comes the time to split up again and the most important question is: When do we see each other again?

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The next day after arriving in Puerto Natales everything was prepared to go hiking in the national park Torres del Paine: I got a tent, a sleeping bag, an insulating underlay, some simple food consisting of mainly instant noodles and most importantly my hiking companion Maik who also provided a stove for cooking. The plan was to do a series of trails called the „W“, which is named like that as it looks like a W on the map.

Departure from Puerto Natales

Naturally the first day our bags were heaviest as there was still all the food in there. So we were glad reaching our first destination for the night, which happened to be the only refuge open in the whole park at that time. Already on this day we got good glances of what landscape to expect the next days:

Day 1: If you guess what I am saying here, you win a price

Another picture of Day 1 with an added component: Can you find it?

The second day was a relief, as we could leave our bags at the refuge. The destination of the day was the Grey Glaciar and the weather was awesome permitting to get some really, really nice photos:

I discovered I like taking pictures of clouds 🙂

So beautiful, I wanted to be in that picture too:

Maik as well:

Arriving nearby the glaciar we took a lunch break. Having nearly finished I saw a fox approaching us. Appears he was just hungry and wanted some of our delicious rice and hospitable as we are we invited him for lunch. Maybe one day he will redo the favor?

Yes, he was that close!

Foxy likes my rice

„Nice glaciar you have there“, he said

Time to pick up our bags again the next day: But soon we got a problem as the stove was not working and the only food we had left, which did not need to be cooked, was 2 portions of oatmeal.
What were our options? „Maybe we can get a bonfire to work and cook on it. I was a scout, maybe I will be able to do that. Or we just make a diet for the last 2-3 days.“ The thing is we could not rely on meeting somebody and use their stove as the park was basically empty.
But then we met our saviour. It was a mexican coming the other way. He told us that in the next refuge on our way there was a window broken and maybe we will find something there which may help us.

It´s not breaking in, when the window is open!

The house was empty and a bit dirty, but it offered some nice features: There was lots of food left, there were mattresses and so we could comfortably sleep inside. Only problem was that water, electricity, heating and gas were disconnected. Having tried without success to fix his cooking device Maik surprisingly found a way to connect the gas and so we could cook something inside the house. Unexpected and certainly Awesome! Later we made a fire in the wood stove and drank Piscolas. We thought: What a nice life we have in this place, let’s stay another day here 🙂

So the next day we relaxed, had breakfast with a brazilian guy walking by and I did the usual stuff to keep the house running: cleaning the house, removing some of the dead rats, collecting and chopping some wood and placing signs for our fellow hikers:

Rendezvous at my place?

The rest of the time we could just enjoy the setting. Why not just stay here for a month?

I don´t know, where I was, when Maik was taking these impressive pictures…

But still the next day it was departure time and we were to get to the Torres del Paine, which give the park its name. And some wearisome hours later there they were:

Finally arriving at those towers

A freezing night (It is probably not a good idea to be too lazy to set up a tent.) , some other hours of walking to the pickup point and a broken wheel later we were back in civilization. I probably had one of the longest showers in my life and besides some marks on my shoulders caused by the bagpack and a right foot which hurted me on every step the effects of those last days were forgotten.

Well, not exactly. I for sure had an amazing week and I will always be glad to remember it. I can only recommend going there in low season as it’s certainly nicer to be there meeting maybe 3 persons per day than 500 (It’s said to be like that in summer.).
To wrap it up, I will leave you with a picture of

one of many birds you could observe in the park.

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Temuco, Pucon, Puerto Varas and the island of Chiloe. What can I say about these places? Well, it was not too exciting FOR ME. But it’s not the problem of those places, as they all lie in beautiful surroundings. The problem lies probably more in the fact that I’m already travelling for quite a while, so it is hard to find new things that excite me that much. It is now often like this:
Oh, there is a nice volcano. Ah, have been to too many of them. See, there is a nice lake. Well, lakes I have seen plenty. Wow, there are some beautiful waterfalls around. Hmm, another waterfall…
You get the idea: It is getting difficult to always encounter completely new experiences. But I am not complaining about it, as it´s probably just part of travelling, isn´t it?
Some things are still enjoyable, though:

Yes, it was already beer o’clock

So I was quite happy to get some distraction by doing a ferry trip from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales, which was supposed to take us 3 nights. As I have never been that long on a ship and the movement used to cause me some sickness in the past, I bought some pills to fight that before entering the ship. Well, what I did not know about those pills is that they also make you sleepy and so the first 2 days you could often find me like that:

Sweet dreams are made of this

I probably slept as well, while other people were busy taking pictures like that:

Splash!

Also we had some delay, as the ship was stopped for nearly a whole day – it would have been to dangerous to go into the open ocean at that time. So we got an extra day of sitting around and doing not too much – the weather being rainy and cloudy almost all the time. Only the last day was nice, sailing through the fjords of Patagonia and enjoying the time outside.

Fairplay is important, kids

Teaching some famous combinations

Safety first

Jugglers never get bored anywhere!

Finally we reached our destination in Puerto Natales. After waiting what felt like ages we could leave the ship and the rest of the day was spent trying to organize everything for the next day: The national park Torres del Paine was waiting…

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Goodbye Bolivia and Welcome to Europe

At least that´s how it feels like right now. After nearly 6 months in all those other Countries crossing the border from Bolivia to Chile shows you a huge contrast. Many things change:

There is no more trash in the streets. There are hardly any street sellers. The busses only make stops at certain predefined points. (It took me some time standing on the street and seeing all those buses passing by in Santiago before I realized that ;-)) There are no people wearing traditional clothes. The roads are mostly paved. You cannot buy lunch for a dollar.
Everything feels so familiarly european. Having improved my spanish a lot the language does not even play a big role although the chilean accent can really mess you up, cachay. The only „big difference“ I could recognize so far is that Kermit the frog is called la rana Rene.

What else is there to tell? Things I did so far in Chile:

Cycling and Crawling under some rocks in San Pedro de Atacama:

As the name tells, San Pedro de Atacama lies in the Atacama desert, which is supposed  to be the driest desert on earth. And it is probably one of the best places worldwide to watch the stars, as there are absolutely no clouds! Unluckily there was a full moon while we were there, so we could not visit one of the observatories.

Next I went south to La Serena from where I visited the Valle del Elqui. There I was shown how Pisco, the chilean national liquor, is made. The way they organize their tour is quite clever: First they bore you with a walk around the area. Then you try all those different flavors. And finally you can buy stuff you don´t need in their shop.

Continuing southwards I explored the beautiful town of Valparaiso. Is is an interesting place – lying next to the sea and having lots of stairs and elevators. There I was meeting some of the greatest chilean poets:

Mr. Huidobro

Mr. Neruda

and Mrs. Mistral

Valparaiso also seems to be a paradise for street dogs. There are so many of them. But they are quite friendly. One of them decided to be my friend without me doing anything. He even waited in front of the supermarket while I was buying groceries and barked at other dogs or persons approaching me. I could have used that one in Guatemala!

Right next to Valparaiso lies Viña del Mar, where I ran into one of the stone heads from Easter Island. Some of them had been brought to the chilean main land and as I won´t visit the island it was nice to see one „live“.

Hi, I´m a Moai and you?

In Santiago I was staying now for a while in the apartment of Rodrigo, whom I had met in Uyuni. It was really nice of him to offer to stay at his place just after knowing me one day. And he shared everything: His knowledge of Chile, his apartment, his bike, the weekend house of his parents. But baby, he did not let me drive his car.

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