Holaatjes allemaal!

As we mentioned the last time, we really loved Santiago. The weather was great (around 25-26 degrees) and it was really sunny. One evening, we took a cable car up San Cristobal hill, which is known for its beautiful sunsets over the city. Of course, we did it in style and took a bottle of champagne with us and half a kilo of cherries. The view and the sunset were indeed spectacular and we spend a couple of romantic hours up there, just looking into each others eyes..... ;-)

The next day, we took a bus to Mendoza in Argentina. It was an 8 hour drive straight through the Andes, quite spectacular. Mendoza, of course, is well known for its wines. The first surprise was to see that Norton (a commonly available brand in Dutch supermarkets) was situated next to a huge factory spitting out dark fumes all over the region...we will never drink that stuff again!! The only way to really enjoy Mendoza was to accept the fact that we were about to spend obscene amounts of money on wines, wines, wines and some carne...

...which is exactly what we did. Probably the best thing we did in Mendoza was having lunch at a so called 'Bodega' or vineyard of the Zucchardi family. They pampered us with glasses of wine with every course (about eight...) and one of the best barbeques we ever had. They really know meat in Argentina. The wines they served were of great quality and sometimes it was hard to choose which one was best...

After our indulging lunch, we bought one of their best bottles and had another ‘drinkgelag´ in the evening, going to one of the local restaurants in town where you could bring your own bottle of wine. The next day we did the same thing all over again, gaining all the weight we had lost over the last few months.

From Mendoza, we travelled to Buenos Aires. We heard many great stories about the Argentinean capital but found ourselves to be a little bit disappointed. Main reason was probably that it was burning hot as the city was suffering a heat wave. This meant +35 degrees Celsius which due to the humidity of about 100% felt more like 40-45 degrees...suffocating and not the climate that makes you want to do a lot. Added to this, we booked a room in a hostel that did not have a window, which made us feel like sausages being cooked in an oven. Fortunately BA has really good restaurants so we tried to forget our disappointment by... well... drinking more wine and eating more carne and - big surprise - that worked quite well...

From BA we took a direct bus back to Santiago - a 22 hours ride, a record for us. Fortunately, the busses in South America and Argentina specifically are quite unlike European busses. In general, they offer two different classes, semi-cama and cama. The lowest class, semi-cama, provides huge 80% reclineable chairs and with about a meter of legroom (!!), which will get you through the night quite comfortably. However, the price difference between semi-cama and the highest class - cama - is often only a few euros so cama is our drive of choice. In cama you have even bigger leather chairs which are 100% reclineable (we ended up having this biggg matrimonial bed). Moreover, they have stewards that will help you with your every need, show movies and serve breakfast, lunch and diner (including - of course more wine(!!)). All in all traveling in these buses is more comfortable than flying business class in an airplane...although it does take a big longer...

We spend one more day in Santiago where we visited the well known fish market and indulged ourselves with a complete King Crab for lunch and of course more wine (do you see a pattern emerging??). No need to get your hands dirty, a guy actually comes to your table and patiently extracts all the meat the Crab has to offer, wonderful!

The following day, we took a bus to Pucon which is located in the Chilean lake district. The lake district is known for its lakes of course, as the name suggests, set in farm land and overlooked by snow capped volcanoes...spectacular! The town of Pucon itself is the center for outdoor adventure sports such as wild water rafting, speed boarding and climbing. Lots of people only stay 2 or 3 days, but the moment we arrived we decided to stick around longer because it was such a cute village, lots of German styled wooden houses, a beautiful lake shore and Villarica - an impressive snow capped volcano - always in the background.

Unfortunately we had to drop the first two activities on day one when the guy at the counter of the outdoor shop started laughing out loud when we asked him if it was ok to do rafting or speed boarding 6 weeks after breaking a collar bone...so we settled for hiking.

Didn't we mention that we would never ever ever ever (!!) climb a mountain again after the traumatic experience of Villanaraju in Peru. Well - guess what - the first thing we did was exactly that...we climbed the Villarica, a very active volcano that still spews out fumes every day. Fortunately it is somehow connected to the same magma field of Chaiten, which exploded last year and covered most of Patagonia in ashes. We were told that if one volcano is active the other one isn´t and vice versa. So it was considered quite safe to climb Villarica. The climb was pretty hard, going from 1500 meters up to 2900 meters above sea level, which is more than the height difference of the Villanaraju climb for example. However, the relatively low altitude makes a huge difference, because the air is much denser and you don't have to stop every 5 meters to regain your breath.

Just when we got to the top, huge clouds of phosphor fumes engulfed us, making us cough like mad and reducing our live expectancy by at least 15 years...The biggest treat was still waiting for us - the way down is...sledding (!!)... on your bum with help of one of those little plastic sleds that you see little children use in the French ski resorts. Think about it, that´s a sled ride covering 1400 meters of height difference and going straight down at ridiculous speeds in the tubes that were carved out by the many sledders before you... just like bobsledding. It was an amazing experience and in itself worth another climb up the mountain.

Two days later, we did the so called 'tres lagos' trek, taking us about 6 hours through one of the most spectacular sceneries of the lake district and offering beautiful views on the Villarica.

After a week, we said goodbye to Pucon and took a five hour bus trip to Puerto Montt, the capital of the lake district but otherwise quite unspectacular, although we did enjoy a very nice dinner at the seafood market overlooking the harbor. The reason we stayed here was because this was the departure port for our 4 day boat-trip on the Navimag, a huge cargo boat that nowadays also caters to tourist, taking them from Puerto Montt through narrow channels flanked by snowcapped mountains and the open sea to Puerto Natales, the gateway to Torres del Paine. There is not a lot to do on the boat but to take in the landscape, read a book or two and have fun with the other passengers. Which is exactly what we did. While waiting to board the boat we met Sjoerd and Pär, a Dutch guy and a Swedish guy, and we had a really good time with them, hanging on the deck, drinking a couple of wines and spending the nights playing cards.

The last night on the boat, the crew organized a big party with bingo (!!) and lots of dancing, great fun! Our mechanic repair guy was the star of the evening singing several familiar songs.

The arrival port of Puerto Natales is the main town to organize trips to the world famous Torres del Paine national park. This park offers the essence of Patagonia, rugged snow capped mountains, rivers, forests, lakes, great views and of course glaciers. We decided to do the so- called 'W' trek, taking us from one refugio to the next for 6 days in a row, spending between 4 to 7 hours every day walking with big 10 kilo backpacks. (Mam, pap, wedden dat jullie vroeger nooit gedacht hadden dat ik ooit zoveel zou wandelen!) It was pretty tough, especially after a couple of days carrying a big backpack on your back, but it was lots of fun.

The second night, in refugio Chileno, we met a Dutch couple, Thomas and Merel, and found out that they were walking the same route as we were. So we spend the next four nights chilling in the refugios and sharing our stories of pain and endurance. The third night we met Sjoerd in refugio Cuernos (remember from the Navimag) who was also walking the 'W', but in opposite direction as ourselves. We hooked up and had Dutch evening, the five of us drinking and eating in the refugio.

In general, we were surprised by the sheer amount of Dutch people walking around in this part of the world, you literally see and hear them everywhere!! Particularly, Torres del Paine seems to attract an awful lot of our fellow countrymen. In the last refugio, Grey, we ended up with 5 Dutch couples (!!) and only 5 non-Dutch people, pretty bizar. The very last day we did a walk on Glaciar Grey, which was very very spectacular - beautiful sceneries, great blue and white colors and some thrilling climbs up and down the crevasses (yes, we were wearing crampons, but no ropes....). There are complete rivers floating on top, through and below Grey Glacier, some of them up to 30 meters deep.

All in all, Torres del Paine was definitely one of the highlights of our trip (so we have some understanding what all the Dutchies come to do here...). We are now off to El Calefate in Argentina, to do even more hiking in Patagonia (although Mischa is having second thoughts already...).

Leaves us to wish you all: A HAPPY CHRISMAS AND THE VERY BEST FOR 2009!!!

Hasta Pronto!!

Lots of love, Mischa and Thomas