7th November 2003. As you can probably imagine, after New Zealand, smog-bound Santiago with its population of 4.5 million came as a bit of a shock to both of us. We realised as we left the terminal building that we were once more back on the traveller trail, any home comforts we’d enjoyed over the last few months were now a long way away. After a surprisingly cheap taxi ride into Santiago we found our accomodation easily enough. It was pretty grotty, probably worse than many of the places we’d stayed in whilst in S.E Asia, which on occasions was grim. However we decided to sit tight as we’d arranged to meet Sarah and Chris there who were probably somewhere high over the Atlantic on their way over to us.
When they arrived next morning in the taxi it was great, neither of us had slept we were that excited, in fact we’d been running to the door all morning each time we heard a car. When we finally saw their smiling faces in the taxi window it was almost surreal, seeing someone familiar, especially friends after so long is a pretty amazing experience. Chris and Sarah had also brought us out loads of goodies and letters from home which were great to receive, thanks everyone who sent us stuff and money out, it really does mean a lot to get things from home. We spent most of the afternoon catching up in a restaurant in the fish markets close to Rio Mapocho and downing gallons of Pisco. We tried Curanto a sort of seafood chowder, which tasted OK, but was full of some of the most frightening shellfish we’d ever seen (as a diver you can imagine that’s pretty bad!), we ended up renaming it Star Trek soup due it’s high alien content! After all the Pisco sour Chris and I were that drunk that by the time went to look around the museum neither of us could remember even seeing any of it next day!
As our accomodation was a bit scruffy we decided to head off south and explore Santiago more fully on our return. We took an overnight coach down to Pucon which sits between Volcan Villarica to the east and the Rio Pucon to the north. We stayed just outside at a place called Currarrahue on a small farm which has a few dorms and space for camping. It was a great place, with really good traditional food, some of served in a traditional Mapuche Indian hut to the rear of the farmhouse. Chris had been tormenting me by e-mail about all the new outdoor gear he’d been buying for the trip out. He was dying with laughter when he produced from his pack probably the best tent on the market, a Terra Nova ‘Ultra Quasar’ – the git! I’m not jealous, honest! There’s loads to do in Currarrahue, we walked to the waterfalls and also visited the hot pools, which turned out to be nothing like we’d imagined. Getting there was fun enough, you had to get a little old Chilean guy called Chippie to row you across the river for 200 pesos. A little walk further brought you to the springs which I think we all expected to be open air hot pools amongst the rocks. Instead they’re housed in a beautiful wooden building literally in then middle of nowhere. You’d have been charged a fortune at home to use facilities like this at home, it cost us about a fiver for as long as you wanted, chilling in the pools listening to modern classical chillout music – fantastico! We had hoped to climb the 2847m Volcano whilst in Pucon (one of Chiles most active, which last blew in 1971 releasing 30 million cubic meters of lava!), but poor weather meant that the cloud base was low and the guides were not keen to venture up the mountain, which was a shame.
From Pucon we caught the bus south again to Valdivia the home of Kunstmann beer. Valdivia named the city of rivers is one of Chile’s most picturesque cities, founded by the Spanish in 1552, it now has a very German feel to the town as large communities moved there in the 1850’s. An incredible sight, are the large Sea-lions which come up the river to feed on fish scraps from the boats which tie up by the ‘Feria Fluvial’ market. You can get within a few feet of them, although I have to say they stink awful and seem do nothing other than fight with each other!
From Pucon we headed south once again to Puerto Varas, the small gateway town to Parque Nacional Vincente Perez which again had a very Austrian/German feel. We found fantastic, spotlessly clean accommodation at Casa Azul, a wooden cottage on the hill overlooking the town. We also discovered Terra Nova, a small bar serving what we reckon is the best Pisco sour in Chile! As a growing extreme sports location we decided to take advantage of the grade IV stretches of river running below the snow capped, incredibly picturesque 2652m Volcan Osorno and go rafting. We had an absolute ball. The run down the rapids lasted an hour and a half. The drops didn’t compare with the grade V we did in New Zealand (some up to 7m but only lasting 20 mins) but the consistent ferocity of the river along its entire length more than made up for it. As before in NZ the guide allowed Chris and I to jump over the side for the last rapid and go down clinging to the outside of the raft, the water was like ice, even in a thick wetsuit but it was worth it for the buzz. The town lies only 20km from Puerto Montt and we got a local bus over there to catch our onward LAN Chile flight down to Punta Arenas. After lightening up our packs and leaving some gear in storage at the airport we caught our flight south, landing around midnight. The views from the plane of the sun setting were absolutely incredible. We did have a bit of a panic at the airport before flying, when we realised we’d left Benzine in our stove fuel bottles. We had to sneak outside and pour it down the drain around the corner where all the workers kept disappearing for a cigarette. We had visions of reading the news the following day to hear the airport had blown up after somebody dropped a but-end down the grate!
Punta Arenas is a really interesting place, although quite run down it’s obvious to see that once the city possessed great wealth, and being there where so many great explorers had been before really did give you that end of the world feeling. The city is separated from Tierra Del Fuego by the Magellanes straights, the next stop from there being either the Falkland Islands to the east, or Antarctica to the south beyond Cape Horn. After over-nighting in Punta we took a bus 250km north to Puerto Natales which took us around three hours. The town of Puerto Natales sits on the Seño Ultima Esperanza (Last Hope Sound) and is the gateway to the Torres Del Paine National Park, which is where we planned to head next. We found a couple of fantastic restaurants in P. Natales, one a fish restaurant with views of the snow capped mountains beyond the sound. The second an amazing lamb barbeque; where they literally roast half a lamb over an open fire in the restaurant. I can honestly say I’ve never tasted lamb so good.
After lightening our packs again so we only had basic equipment and enough provisions to last us 6 days, we caught a bus into the Torres Del Paine National Park. The views of the Torres Del Paine Massif when you first catch sight of it across the Patagonian steppe is just impossible to put into words, it’s immense. Central granite pillars rise vertically for thousands of meters into the blue skies, nestling amongst gargantuan snow clad mountain peaks. The area is an 180,000 hectare Unesco Biosphere Reserve and boasts some of the best hiking and climbing in the world. We planned to do the ‘W’, a 76km (approx) W shaped trek, which due to the terrain takes around 6 days. There are various ways to complete the trek, you can take the easy option, travel light and sleep at one of the refugios which line the lower stretches of the trail. Or take the more difficult option of trekking to the wild-camping areas high up the valleys which afford the most spectacular views of the Massif and Glaciers; the down side being that you have to haul all your equipment up there (approx 15-20kg each). We took the latter option and despite the pain were well rewarded! The first leg of the ‘W’ heading towards Campamento Torres was incredibly windy, we were literally blown off the trail in places and blasted by shale and dust along the entire route. It was only when we finally reached the tree line below Mirador Las Torres that we found some respite. After setting up camp we left our gear and pushed further up the steep boulder strewn foothills of the central massif to the mirador (lookout). The views from the top are mindblowing. You basically look into an amphitheatre containing a lake, out of which rise the vertical granite faces of the Horns. While you’re up there rocks and snow are continually crashing down the slopes into the water. We stayed around half an hour, both the driving wind and the fact it had started to snow forced us back down the mountain to our camp. Next morning we woke to covering of snow on the slopes around us, after filtering water from a nearby natural spring, we struck camp and headed back down the trail to the next campsite at Refugio Las Cuernos. Again we camped beneath a stunning vista, setting our tents up beneath a tree with sheer granite walls rising thousands of feet above us. As we cooked in camp that night we looked high up onto the mountain, watching spin-drift blowing off the peaks creating fantastic patterns across the sky. After again striking camp mid-morning we continued up into the Valle Frances. By the time we reached Campamento Italiano we we’re looking up towards another amphitheatre of rock capped by thousands, possibly millions of tonnes of snow and ice perched precariously along the highest ridge. In places this had slid down and compacted, to feed a glacier which reached out towards us and terminated maybe a kilometre from our camp. The wind had again picked up, gusting at gale force at times and whipping the glacial river up into sheets of spray which moved down the valley at tremendous speed. When Chris and I went to filter water from the river that evening we literally had to lie beneath a rock for cover to stop ourselves being blown into the water. It was an amazing feeling, lying there next to a crashing glacial river looking at the mountains and snow, whilst taking your water directly from the river running from under the nearby glacier. Chris and I pushed on a little further that evening and almost reached Campamento Britannico before snow, and the fact it was beginning to turn dark persuaded us to turn back. That night Mika and Willem, a great dutch couple we’d met in Pucon rolled into camp late, so we helped them clear an area and all camped together, it was good to see them again. During the night we could hear the thunder of snow avalanching off the mountain onto the glacier below – the ground literally shook at times. We were also glad that we’d bought 4 season mountain tents from home. The cheaper rental tents some people had were clearly not up to the job, and if it wasn’t for the shelter of the trees were in jeopardy of being blown off the campsite during the night. The next stretch was a long haul over to Glacier Grey via Pehoe. We pitched our tents on the shore of Lago Grey below the terminal face of the glacier, an enormous expanse of ice stretching back as far as the eye could see. Glacier Grey made the glaciers we’d previously seen in NZ look nothing more than snowballs! We actually woke the following morning to see icebergs floating past our tent! At Refugio Grey we found a small company called Bigfoot who offered glacier walks and ice climbs up on the glacier itself. Not wishing to do the hiking we negotiated a rate for Chris and I to have an afternoon’s ice-climbing instruction. It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done and totally different to climbing on rock. We left Refugio Grey in a small lauch and had to dodge icebergs to reach the safer left hand side of the ice face. We spent the afternoon learning about setting up ice anchors, how to move on the ice, also the techniques required to scale the vertical and sometimes overhanging ice, using ice axes and crampons. The finale was abseiling down into a 20m crevase, then climbing back out – awesome. Bad news is I guess I’ve found another expensive hobby!
While Chris and I were ice climbing the girls had decided to take one of the tents and do the 4 hour hike back over to Refugio Pehoe, where the ferry left at 12.00 the following day. Chris and I couldn’t face the hike next morning so decided to pack the remaining tent and head over ourselves through the night. It was an incredible experience night hiking through the Patagonian landscape. The guys at Bigfoot warned us just as we were laving to keep an eye out for Puma which hunt up on the mountain – nice! We didn't see any Puma but we did see Andean Condors riding the thermals high above the mountains before it went dark. We made Pehoe at 1.30 am, it was pitch black as we came down from the mountains to the shoreline and found the girls tent, it had taken us just over 3.5 hours to do the crossing, not bad. We all reached Puerto Natales the following day and after a much needed shower went to stuff our faces at the Lamb Barbeque we’d spotted previously.
The following day we took another bus over the Argentinian border to El Calafate, en route to view the Moreno Glacier, one of the worlds few remaining advancing glaciers. El Calafate is a really nice town, obviously up and coming, with some very plush hotels in the making and some great restaurants. Another few hours the following day saw us at the Moreno itself, 60m of blue-hued ice, rising from the lake across an advancing front maybe 2-3 km long. Peridocally house-sized chunks of ice break-off and crash into the lake below with a noise like a rifle crack followed by rolling thunder.
With Chris and Sarah’s 3 week vacation nearly up we headed north again, taking our return flight out of Punto Arenas to Puerto Montt. After collecting our left-luggage we took a coach through the night directly to Valparaiso on the coast only two hours from Santiago. We found a great family run hostel high up on the hill at Conception and spent the afternoon exploring the hills behind, we also took a bus up to Vina Del Mar a short way along the coast. In the evening we found a great little local bar behind the hostel, we ended up playing board games with a really good bunch of Chileans and knocking back even more Pisco – I’m beginning to fear we’re addicted to the stuff! Valparaiso itself is a pretty grey and run down port town, once the wealthier neighbour of the capital, it was great to visit once but I don’t think I’d return there. Next day saw us back in Santiago. We booked into La Casa Roja, a hostel under renovation by an Australian couple. I say hostel, it’s actually an old mansion maybe 30% finished. The place is a building site, but is going to be amazing when it’s complete – it’s also great value for money at only 5000 pesos each per night (5 pounds). After scaling Cerro San Cristobal using the funicular railway, we ate that evening at Ali Baba a Lebanese restaurant over in Barrio Bellavista, which turned out to be a bit of a disaster – you could have broken a window with the piece of steak they gave me! Bellavista is a great area though with loads of bars and a Bohemian feel.
Sarah and Chris left us the following day for the airport and their return to the UK. We’d had an amazing time with two great friends, naturally it got a bit tearful for everybody when they left. We just couldn’t believe our three weeks were up. In one way were sad to see them go, but in another way I suppose it meant that this part of our journey was over and we’d be back with them and other friends soon on home turf. From here on we planned to head north, up away from the ice and snow of the south to the desert and salt flats of the high north.
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