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¡Buenos días!
After a bumpy flight crossing the Pacific we made it to Santiago de Chile - Bienvenidos a Suramerica! Our flight left Auckland on the 2nd of Febuary at 4.30pm and we arrived in Santiago on the 2nd of Febuary at noon. Yes you are reading this right. We crossed the dateline which meant our 2nd of Febuary was 42hours, in stead of 24. I´ve never experienced something like this before, and I can´t recommend anyone doing it... We felt horrible! As soon as we got off the plane in Santiago literally everything was in Spanish. Nobody even tries to speak English to you here, and I guess it´s the main language on this continent so they are quite right... It does put us in some difficult situations though. Fortunately I remembered more Spanish (from my classes in secondary school) than I thought, so I could have a ´conversation´ with our taxi driver. But it is so frustrating not to be able to express yourself properly! This had to change! More about this later...
We took our time to adapt to South America as it was a bit of a culture shock after travelling in ´safe´ Australia and NZ. People warn you to take care of your belongings about 5 times a day, which makes me more worried than I already was! Our hostel in Santiago had a pool so there was no real reason for us to leave the hostel the first day. We did a city tour which was organised through the hostel. Our guide wanted to give us a real ´local´ experience, in other words, trying to spend as less money as possible. Drinking coffee is a very common thing in Chile, especially for men. To attract more men to the coffee shops Chileans invented the ´cafe con piernes´. I can tell you, it felt like being at a rave party and in the red light district at the same time. Imagine Aniek and me, taken over by jetlag, not having a clue what cafe con piernes is, in a cafe with have naked women and men in suits. You should´ve seen our faces. We walked through different markets and went to melted pineapple ice cream and an Argentinean liqor. We got to the bar at 4 and by 5 I already regretted to even try and finish the drink with the jetlag we were suffering from... We had a great afternoon though we some really cool people from the hostel who´ve been bumping into since! From Santiago we took the bus to Valparaíso, just a 2hrs drive. We went travelled together with 2 girls we met in our hostel. We wanted to go to a ´quiet´ beach side place to relax a bit before our week in Patagonia, not knowing that Valparaíso is Chile´s main marine port and inhabits about 2 million people. We stayed at a really nice hostel, Casa Aventura, and were able to take a train to the beach of Portales. After 2hrs on the beach we had a pretty harsh wake up call, as Angelica, one of the girls we were travelling with, was nearly mugged by a 12year old boy. A beach security woman saw the boy run up to us and jumped the boy. Within seconds there were 4 police men on top of them, and the boy was put in jail. Even though Aniek and I were already lying on top of our bag, we were still in shock. This wasn´t a very nice welcome to South America... It´s a pity you can´t always walk around with your camera because at these moments there´s always something to take a photo of... I guess we just have to deal with it. We stayed in Valparaíso for 3 days and did another walking tour there. Valparaíso is also well known for its street art and murals. I think it is incredible these ´paintings´ don´t get vandalised, as I´m sure that´s what would happen at home... We had some really good nights with the people in the hostel there, before heading back to Santiago as that´s where we were going to hop on our flight to Patagonia!
We had to fly to Buenos Aires first, to change on to a plane to El Calafate, in the Argentinian side of Patagonia. The flight from BA to Calafate was very bumpy as you fly over the Andés which causes for a lot of turbulance, or as our pilot liked to refer to as ¨turbulation¨. We had some great sights of the Argentinian lake district though, and as we descended into Calafate (1 runway and 1 ¨shed¨ serving as terminal) I couldn´t get over the colours of the sky and lakes. They were the bluest I´d seen in my life! We booked a tour with GAP adventures for the week, so we were organised for our stay in Patagonia and sure to see all the necesary sights. We were in for a treat because we were staying in hotels, which we didn´t know... The only thing was we weren´t able to cook for ourselves as there was no communal kitchen, which resulted in us spending more money than we would´ve if we hadn´t booked anything in advance and would´ve stayed in hostels. To be honest though, it was nice to be able to sleep properly for a change and not being waken by drunken roommates at 4am every night and being able to shower without flipflops. On our first full day in El Calafate we went to the Poreto Moreno Glacier, which is one of the more than 300 glaciers of Patagonia´s continental ice cap. This ice cap is the 3rd biggest ice cap in the world, after Antartica and Greenland, and the Poreto Moreno glacier is the third biggest glacier on the Patagonian continental ice cap (is everyone still following this?!). We hopped on a boat to see the 20meter ice walls up close and heard a lot of cracks and saw a lot of ice falling down, causing waves in the lake. We saw a glacier in New Zealand, but this was something completely different, it was SO big. The Poreto Moreno Glacier is 250km2, same size as the city of Buenos Aires. That night we had our first Argentinian steak and walked along Lago Argentino (largest lake in Argentina), on which our hotel was located, and took photos of the wild horses and flamingo´s. It kept getting better and better! The day after we went to an estancia, which is a farm with horses and sheep. We did horse back riding through the mountains with our very own gaucho before sitting down to the best bbc-ed lamb and steak in the world, which was accompanied by a rather nice glass of Malbec and finished of with panqueques with dulce de leche (caramel creme). Que riquisimo! I´m waiting for the pounds to pile on now.... To balance all this eating a bit we took the bus to El Chalten, Argentina´s hiking capital. It was a 3hr drive through the pampas (steppe) to the only 15year old town. We had two days and I think we used our time pretty effectively. The first day we did a 27km hike to Laguna de Los Tres (3 glacier lakes). It took us 10hrs to do the walk as some parts were so extremely steep (50%). We hiked up from 400m to 1250m and back. It was definitly worth it though when we got to the 3 lakes and saw the Fitz Roy Mountain (3405m) with clear blue skies. Apparently this only happens about 20 days a year - lucky us! This mountain is every climbers dream, but apparently it is still very dangerous to climb on good days because of the strong winds. We weren´t planning on climbing it though, especially after we were blown to the ground by the wind, it was really really strong! On our way back we didn´t feel as lucky anymore as we did at the top of the mountain as our feet hurt so bad we were nearly crying when we got back to the hotel. Naturally we treated ourselves to another steak that night. Some people told us that the Laguna Torre hike was a lot more laidback, or as the guide book says ´relatively easy´. We decided as we were here now, nearly at the end of the world, we had to make good use of our time so there we went. At one third of the walk we already nearly turned back, but we are not the type of girls that don´t finish something we start. Basically, we ended up walking another 23km, and the views weren´t even worth it. The blisters on our feet are so bad we still can´t wear shoes now. What were we thinking, walking 50kms in 2 days! At least we got some exercise in, but what was that guidebook thinking to say ´relatively easy´?? Yes, if you´ve been lying in bed for 3 weeks prior to the walk and not after you´ve already walked 27km the day before. Anyway, we were extremely proud of ourselves though and saw some amazing scenery which I can´t compare with anything I´ve seen before in my life.
Our Patagonian dream ended and it was back to civilization. We flew to Buenos Aires where we were going to stay at Milhouse hostel for a week. Everyone we´ve met here talks about Milhouse so were wondering what it was going to be like... We signed up for Spanish lessons which are going pretty well but are taking so much energy! Especially if you´re in bed at 4 every morning and need to be in class by 11... At least I am able to express myself a little better now! The hostel organises parties every night or other activities. On Valentine´s day we were tricked into speed dating (never again, but so funny) and yesterday we went to a tango show. We even had our own lesson and I think we did pretty well! The ´maestro´ was so funny. We had to do a tango ´pose´ where you stamp your foot on the ground, or as our teacher said (with a strong spanish accent) ¨Kill the spider!¨. Due to our classes we haven´t been able to see all the sights yet but we still have the weekend to walk around. We are even going to a a football match tomorrow which is supposed to be legendary game! Hope everyone is ok back home and will update again soon.
That´s all for now,
¡Beso e hasta luego!
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