Category: Travel

Thoughts on Chile

Being back home and back at work has both given us a new perspective on our travels but also severely limited the amount of time that we have to reflect on our trip. The next major post, Antarctica, is a big one and it’ll be a little while before we’ve gone through all the photos and videos to pull out something to illustrate this incredible continent. In the meantime, in our last post we left Chile for the final time so here are my thoughts on Chile.

Time for a little recap and summary of our thoughts on Chile. We really enjoyed our time in Chile, and it is somewhere that I would love to return to and explore further one day. Even though we spent around a month there altogether, I feel there is a lot more we can come back to. Chile is the long thin west coast of South America, it has a huge range of landscapes and some really interesting cities too. Continue reading “Thoughts on Chile”

Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire!

The 'Fin del Mundo' road
The ‘Fin del Mundo’ road

After spending five days hiking the W-trek we had one final day with our Wicked van Amanda. It was time to drop her off in Punta Arenas, a small town only a few hours drive south. It was a pleasant, uneventful drive, listening to music and driving down a road signposted as the route of the end of the world! The landscape was huge and open and really did feel like the very edge of the world, but the signal was great and the lines from https://www.outdoor-surface-painting.co.uk/road/white-lining.

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The W Trek

The W trek is a five day hike through the Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia. It is the most popular of three hikes known as the W, Q and O named after the shape that they form on a map. Compared to hikes in some other areas of South America these are popular because they are easy enough to be tackled by people with relatively little long-distance hiking experience and they can be completed relatively cheaply as they do not require a guide. However probably the biggest reason for their popularity is the variety of scenery that can be experienced along the way.

The view from the Catamaran whilst crossing Lago Pehoé
The view from the Catamaran whilst crossing Lago Pehoé

We opted for the W trek in 5 days (the most common choice) and chose the West to East direction of the walk.

Our itinerary for the walk and preparation was as follows: Continue reading “The W Trek”

The Patagonian Wilderness – Road Trip Part 3

This post is the final part of our road trip, picking back up with us in the Patagonian wilderness of Argentina. This was probably the most difficult but also exciting section of our road trip with petrol strikes, broken cash machines and a lucky escape from a small electrical fire in the van, in the wilderness, at speed. Sound scary? it was…….

Day 15: Patagonian Steppe and Ruta 40 to El Chalten (365km)

I woke up at about 6am freezing cold in the van, although we’d parked somewhere with some wind shelter it had still become pretty cold overnight. At around 8am we gave up trying to sleep and got up to a sunny but freezing cold morning.

Continue reading “The Patagonian Wilderness – Road Trip Part 3”

Patagonian Road Trip – Part 2

This post returns to our road trip through Argentina and Chile, in which we pick up a friend and start to experience the real wilderness of Patagonia with all its beauty and occasional difficulties.

Day 9: Bariloche (Argentina) and around (92km)

We awoke in our lakeside campsite and had breakfast before heading into Bariloche to collect Stella, our new companion for the rest of our time in the van. We had met Stella in Salta at New Year and had stayed in contact. Realising we were all heading the same way with the same time scale after Bariloche, we decided to travel together in Amanda.

In the cab of Amanda on the ferry to Chile Chico
In the cab of Amanda on the ferry to Chile Chico

We needed to more than just a vague plan for the rest of our road trip so the three of us used the WiFi in Stella’s hostal to plan the rest of our road trip. While it it’s never nice to lose so much time to planning, we finished a few hours later with a rough plan. We also used the opportunity to do some laundry and stock up on supplies. While we waited for the laundry we sat outside in the sun enjoying a pint of beer from a local microbrewery and then drove to a nearby campsite.

Continue reading “Patagonian Road Trip – Part 2”

Road trip, the beginning

We’ve been back in the UK for a fortnight now and while our first priority was to see family, a few of our closest friends, and to find somewhere to live in Bristol, we have finally found some time to get the next post ready to publish.

Here is the first of a few posts about our third road trip, where we hired a camper van for 27 days and drove all the way from Santiago in Chile, through Chile and Argentina down to Punta Arenas. We crossed the Chile-Argentina border four times and drove 4,678km in total.

Day 1: Santiago (135km)

Amanda, always easy to find in a car park
Amanda, always easy to find in a car park

The plan was to pick the van up nice and early, collect supplies and make a quick dash to our next destination. Well we all know what they say about the best laid plans, and sure enough our first day with the van ended up being something of an adventure (which of course is the positive spin for “a bit of a nightmare”).

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Heading Home and a Face-lift for the Blog

Well although it is not yet reflected in this blog, we are now on our way home. Our flight leaves Buenos Aires around 9pm tonight and after a brief stop in Madrid we should be arriving home in the early evening tomorrow.

After a bike ride around Montevideo
After a bike ride around Montevideo

 

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Santiago & Valparaíso

Our bus to Santiago, not so Rapido thanks to a 3 hour delay at the border
Not so Rapido thanks to a 3 hour delay at the border

Alex here again to tell you about Santiago and Valparaiso. We were back in Chile after a bus ride that took the best part of 10 hours (4 more than advertised!). We met two really nice English girls on the bus and swapped travel tips to pass the time whilst waiting at the border, this part of the journey took 3 hours waiting in a queue of buses! We’d heard mixed things about Santiago, most backpackers we’d met skip it, or just pass through in transit, but I’d had recommendations from my parents so wanted to spend more time there. We weren’t disappointed and really enjoyed the city.

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Wine Tasting in Mendoza

View across Mendoza from the hotel
View across Mendoza from the hotel

Hi all, its Alex back again to describe our time in Mendoza. Unfortunately two days before the end of the last post, I dropped my camera and it eventually gave up and stopped working, this means all the photos from Mendoza are taken on our mobile phones. We replaced the camera in Santiago so will be back to better quality shots in the next post.

To get to Mendoza we took our first overnight bus from Tucuman, where we’d dropped off the rental car. This bus was a better experience than I’d expected as the seats were comfy and we were served surprisingly good food.

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New Year’s in Salta & a Road Trip in Northern Argentina

Alex here again to describe our second road trip and new year’s eve. We hadn’t made any advance plans for New Year’s Eve, and were persuaded by Ellory, an American we’d met whilst travelling, to come to Argentina. So we hopped on a bus from San Pedro in Chile to Salta in Argentina. The border crossing was very easy and the bus pretty comfortable, although a large section of windy mountain pass reminded me why I don’t like to travel by bus!

Vegetarian sushi in Salta
Vegetarian sushi in Salta

We arrived in Salta in the early evening and realised we were totally unprepared for this new country, having not really done any research. We found the hostel, dumped our bags and went to explore the city. We were pretty hungry and thirsty but had no money. After searching the town for a while we were getting concerned, all the cash machines had queues (the Argentinians are ones to rival the British for queuing!) and only seemed to accept local cards. Then we managed to find a row of international banks, no queues, and they accepted our cards, phew! We went for an unconventional first meal in Argentina, at a very nice vegetarian restaurant with huge portions and some artesanal beers.

Continue reading “New Year’s in Salta & a Road Trip in Northern Argentina”