Villarrica

Villarrica is a small, local's town in the lake region of Chile.  It's right on the lake and at the foot of the active Volcan Villarrica. On the clear days, you could see the volcano through our bedroom window from the hostel. It was pretty amazing.

Our first day in Villarrica was a bit chilly and overcast - a perfect day for the "termas" natural hot springs. There are many in the area.  We went to the most rustic ones called "Los Pozones". And indeed, it was a bunch of nice pools built from river boulders.mall. We spent all afternoon in and out of the hot water...

...and Semu was busy building rock towers.

The next day we just hung out in Villarrica and tried a "completo" which was actually really tasty. You can find this favourite Chilean snack all over the place. It's a bun with a salchicha hotdog, sauerkraut, tomato, avocado, and mayo on top. Being a vegetarian, I chose to get aji (hot sauce) instead of the salchicha.

Our last day in Villarrica was our big day, we climbed the Volcan Villarrica! We had to book a tour, which was a good desicion because they provided us with all the equipment needed. We had a slow start because they were supposed to pick us up at 6:10 am and didn't get there till 7:00. But it turned out great. First of all we had a private tour to go up the mountain, which helped a lot to pass the larger groups on the way up while they took longer breaks. The snow was in great condition so we could hike up in our regular hiking boots and no crampons were needed. The sun was out and it was a beautiful day with a clear view of the volcano as well as the region below us. Can you believe it, we were actually the first group to reach the crater and got to walk around the rim for a bit. We walked as far as you could go without being blown off by the heavy wind gusts and intoxicated by the stinging sulfur-like smell. There was a lot of smoke coming out of the volcano that day, so we didn't stay up there for long.

We had the most fun on the way back down. They provided us with waterproof pants, jackets, a butt pad, and a disk sled. We got to slide down the snowy part of the volcanoe. The only brake was the ice pick in your hand and we got going pretty fast. Yeeeeehaaaaaa!!  : )

La Torre Suiza

Helena, an old friend of mine from way back when I was a little girl in Switzerland, moved to Chile a few years ago. At the beginning of this year, her and her husby took over the La Torre Suiza hostel in Villarrica. Unfortunately we didn't get to meet Alonso because he was out of town, but - by chance - Eugsters,  parents of another old scout & school friend, visited Helena at the same time. It was really nice to walk into a new place and see familiar faces!

 For dinner we had a good old Raclette with patatos from Chiloe, home grown tomatoes and home made pickles. What a great welcome, thank you!!!

Lots of home made bread for breakfast. Delish!

Isla de Chiloé

The Chilean Isla de Chiloé is  famous for its rain forests and its colorful, old wood style churches.

Semu holding mass...or something

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We stayed at the "Hosteal Nuevo Mundo" in Ancud, a town in the northern part of the island. The hostel is built all in wood and most rooms facing the bay. We lucked out and got to stay in the "suite", a double room with shared bath and 3 of the 4 windows looking out over the water. All the pictures on the walls of the hostel are slightly cricked, due to the permanent mini earth quakes happening in the region. You can't feel anything though.

The sun room was a perfect spot to hang out, meet other travelers, eat dinner and have a glass or two of Chilean wine.

On our second day on the island we took a local bus to the penguins. There are fishing boats going out to the island where the pinguins live. March is the end of penguin season and there were only a few left. They are very cute and funny to watch. Flopping around and wabbeling their way up and down the rocks.

The sea otter was super cute.

Deborah from England and Jan from Germany joined us for the penguin adventure. We decided to take the long way back to the bus station. It was a nice and looong walk along a deserted beach with lots of white shells and some rivers to cross. Sure enough we had to take off our shoes a bunch of times. After about an hour and a half of walking on the beach, luckily a local "mariscos" collector gave us a ride at the back of his truck to the end of the beach. If not, we would have definitely missed our last bus back into town.

Chilotean beach cow. Muuuhhhh!!

Patagonia

Ushuaia, Argentina

Christi hiding in the elf forrest.

The view looking south over Ushuaia,

Christi really liked this funky lamp.

Seals and birds on our boat trip in the Beagle Channel.  The birds make their nests out of seaweed and poop.

The lighthouse on our boat trip in the Beagle Channel.

Our bus had to stop and let the sheep go around us.  This is what it was like on all sides of the bus for a few minutes.

Torres Del Paine, Chile

About a centimeter on both sides.

Torres Del Paine (towers of pain).  Our legs felt like towers of pain after the hike up here.  But we got lucky because the peaks were covered in clouds all day, then cleared up just about three minutes after we got to this lookout point.

El Calafate, Argentina

Christi hanging out with her sheep friend.  This was one of the hostel pets.  Bahahaha!!

Perito Moreno Glacier is 5 kilometers (3 mi) wide, with an average height of 74 m (240 ft) above the surface of the water and it has an area of 250 sq km (97 sq mi), with a length of 30 km (19 mi). 

This is the view from the boat while approaching.

And this is the view from the boat while closer up.  We´re still pretty far back but you can´t get too close because of the falling ice chunks.

The view from the lookout trail.

A relaivaly small piece falling off.  It´s actually pretty loud when they smack the water.  We also have some nice video of larger chunks coming down.

El Chaltén, Argentina

This is what it looked like as we drove into town in the evening.  We found this photo on the web because the one we took out of the bus was blury.  AND we woke up the next day to clouds and rain that lasted for a few days.

 As you can see it was windy this day (the photo is even at an angle).  It almost blew us off the mountain and Christi had to sit down and brace herself between two rocks to take this.

Still cloudy, so we hiked to this nearby waterfall.

Bariloche, Argentina

Both of these photos were taken from the top of a hill called Cerro Campanario that was west of town.

Journey to the End of the World

That's what they call Ushuaia...El fin del mundo.
It's definitely not the end of the world, but it is the most southern city of a good size. We didn´t manage to get a flight from BA to Ushuaia for the time and price we were hoping for, so we decided to just go for it and take the bus. Believe me it was a looooooong bus ride and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who gets a chance to fly. The bus trip took 50 hours!!  However, it wasn't actually that bad. The buses in Argentina are surprisingly comfortable. The "semi cama" chairs lean back far enough to sleep, they are more or less on time, have a toilet, and serve food. We took the chance to walk around and move a bit on the occasional stops in any bigger city we went through. The view from the bus, for the most part was a whole bunch of nothing other than bushy or grassy, flat land. The distances were mind boggling. The last 12 hours of the stretch were the most annoying because it wasn't very far, but the two boarder crossings took hours... salida Argentina, entrada Chile....crossing the Strait of Magellan....then crossing back into Argentina.  But, we made it and it turned out to be a good adventure with the occasional view of guanacos (small llamas) and rheas (like small ostriches).

Our bus for the 2 days

Exciting view from the bus of the Patagonian plains. The same for a day and a half. We went to sleep as it looked like this. When we woke up the next morning, it still looked the same.

View out front. The wind shield was looking pretty bad after a while.

Crossing the Strait of Magellan

Ushuaia is put in a really nice setting. There are mountains, the Ushuaya bay,  Beagle Channel and a Glacier right behind the town.

More pics later. They will be more exciting, too : ) Gotta catch another bus right now.