Adios South America and hello New Zealand (Good on ya mate!)

We spent 3 nice days in the "Torres del Paine" national park where we finished the "W" track we started 2 years ago. This time, we were able to visit the missing part of the track that was closed 2 years ago due to the fire in the park. The vegetation has not recovered fully from the fire, so you see a lot of burned trees along the track up to the glacier. Since we didn't want to camp, we booked 2 beds in the hut there and they do dinner as well, so we just needed to carry lunch with us (which still was heavy enough).

Flowers growing again in the park

Soaring Condor

Los Cuernos and burned trees

From the cold and windy south, we made our way up to Santiago de Chile by plane and we arrived in the night at our hostel. We had a double room and the size of the room was big enough to play tennis inside (we actually set the alarm clock to watch the live ticker of Stan!). Or last days in South America we spent with eating, sleeping, using the swimming pool and reading... except for the day where we went to a guided city tour (which was very good!). Since we had some Argentinian Pesos left, we wanted to exchange them in Chile where we noticed that the exchange rate dropped dramatically. So we did not get much Chilenian Peso out of it, but it was sufficient to have dinner and reach the airport of Santiago with it. There, we boarded our Boeing 747 from Quantas for our flight to Sydney (a 14 hour fight).
So, we arrived around 18.00 local time the airport of Sydney, followed by the immigration procedure. We finally checked in at our hotel around 21.00, went for a quick dinner and then straight to bed. Due to the time shift, we were awake early, so we spent our day sight seeing in Sydney (see the pictures below) and we did some essential shopping (out-door stuff). In the evening, we took our Virgin flight to Christchurch for our Kiwi-Adventure. Believe it or not: the immigration takes even longer than in Australia and South America due to the "pest" Control where they wanted to see our hiking boots... Never ending story in short: we arrived in our hostel at 2 in the morning :-)

Harbour bridge

Sydney Opera House

Christchurch was hit by several earthquakes in 2010 / 2011 and almost everything in the city centre is destroyed or needs to be taken down. So in comparison to the city I visited 10 years ago, it is a ghost city in the centre. The cathedral is partially destroyed and there is hardly any shops open in the centre, but there is a lot of space for street art! Besides visiting the city, we were also up to find a cheap rental car and we found it! 37 Kiwi-Dollars (33 USD / 30 CHF) per day and a funny car: Toyota OPA! Not a small car at all but very thirsty (9-10 l per 100 km). So after the acclimatization time, we left Christchurch and headed south to Omaru to visit the penguin colonies there (Yellow - Eyed penguins and blue penguins) before we continued to Dunedin (the city where they brew "Speights - The pride of the South", where you can see Albatross and yellow eyed penguins as well) through the south of the island (the Catlins) to get to Te Anau for our 3 Day Keppler Track. The track is one of the "Great Walks" which are e.g. Milford Sound Track (booked out for this year) and Routeburn Track (also heavily booked already) and the Keppler Track is heavily booked as well, so we had to do a very long first day (25 km) followed by two shorter days. Usually, you splitt our first day into 2 days, but the hut was fully booked already, so we had no other option. The weather was perfect and the track was good as well, so we spent 3 relaxed days there. But before leaving for it, we had a another sunny day in the Milford sound and it's surroundings! We can't complain about the weather so far, just about the sand flies....


Now, our next plans are to drive direction north to Mt. Cook and Arthur's Pass for some more outdoor activities.

Christchurch Cathedral

Christchurch

Centre in Christchurch

Peninsula next to Dunedin

Sea Lion posing for the picture

Penguin posing

Nugget Point - Catlins

Family swimming in the Catlins

Key summit on the way to Milford Sound

Milford Sound

View from Keppler track

Iris Burn waterfall in the morning

Clouds, rain, snow covered summits, costal rain forest, wind - welcome to Patagonia (2)

During the night, the weather cleared up, so we could start our trip through the "valey of glaciers" again to see the "glaciar exploradores". It's a 50 km ride through rough nature on a rough road, passing lakes, hanging glaciers and waterfalls. At the end, you find a path that leads to the lookout for the glacier and, if the sky is clear, you could also see the highest mountain in patagonia, around 4000 m tall. But the low hanging clouds did not let us see it from the lookout.

View into the valley

Hanging glacier

So we continued our trip around the scenic lake to the little town Chile Chico. On the way, we stopped for taking pictures and we also visited the Marble Coves; stone formations in the lake close to Puerto Tranquilo.

Marble Coves

Inside the coves

In Chile Chico, we stayed two nights in this town so we had the chance to visit the national park in the south, where some paths can be hiked and where you have a splendid view to the surrounding mountains. Luckily, the weather was becoming better, so we had a perfect view to them. Leaving Chile Chico the next day early in the morning to be ready for the trip further south, to Cochrane to drop of our German friend and to buy our reserved bus tickets to Villa O'Higgins (There is just 2 buses a week).

Lagune panorama view

Lagune in the park

Steep section ahead

Once we arrived, we noticed they do the "siesta" also in Cochrane, so the office was closed till 15.30. No problem so we had time for lunch and we came back at 15.30. There was someone in the office, but she was just doing the taxi service they offered as well and she told us, that the girl selling the bus tickets is not here. She might comes in an hour :-) so we tried to get the other bus tickets we needed, but no luck there as well, since the office the guy needed to call was closed on Saturday afternoon :-) . So back to the office for the more important tickets to Villa O'Higgins and luckily, now the girl was there... she checked our reservation (which was there) but she said, that she could not sell us the tickets.... ?? Why?... Well, they ran out of the paper tickets they are selling so she offered us to come back on Monday, then she will have new tickets :-D . Obviously, we had to bring back the car then, so this was not an option; we had to wait until we got back by bus to Cochrane to pick up our tickets.
After this successful sunny afternoon in Cochrane, we drove north to Puerto Bertrand, a very laid back town a the shore of a beautiful lack where we enjoyed the sun (and finally got another slight sun burn!), reading the books we had to finish (since we don't want to carry them any longer). From this town, it took us about 6 hours of driving back north to be close to Coyhaique, where we had to hand over the car again. But instead of going to the city, we stayed in another cosy cabaña at the shore of Lago Elizalde in the middle of the forest.

Puerto Bertrand

View around the big lake

Panorama view from the lake

The next day, we had time to visit the city of Puerto Aisen before we handed back our car. So, instead of driving ourselves, we were back to carrying our backpacks ourselves and taking buses to move from A to B. In this case, we had to drive about 10 hours from Coyhaique to Cochrane (to finally by our tickets) to continue with a small bus to Villa O'Higgins. This is a small town at the very end of the Carretera Austral, close to the Argentinian border.
The ride itself is a very picture-some trip through remote places of southern patagonia, including a ferry to cross a fjord. We stayed in a bigger hostel and met a swiss family, travelling with bikes from Ecuador to Ushuaia in 7 months. They travel with their 2 kids (4 years and 2 years old), amazing!

Picture stop before Villa O'Higgins

Using the sunny weather again for a hike in the surroundings we spent the day in Villa O'Higgins. From this place, you can cross to Argentina, to El Chalten. But the trip is not as easy as we expected. There is a little ferry / boat that runs 4 times a week to the other side of the large lake between the two countries. On the other side, there is an estancia where you can stay for the night and where you get basic (but nevertheless tasty!) food. Furthermore, you can visit a glacier similar to the Perito Moreno glacier with the boat; a very nice trip.

View to the glacier

The O'Higgins glacier

The standard Whiskey with ice from the glacier

We had the information, that you need to hike 22 km to pass the border to Argentina (to get to the north shore of lago del desierto) but apparently, you should be able to hire horses to carry your back packs. Well, this was the information we had, but the guy with the horses did not show up and the señora did not know where he was... so we had 2 options: Waiting the next day to see if he shows up (or not) or to hike the 22 km (quite scenic) with our full gear (quite heavy) .... We decided to do the second option and it took us more than 7 hours to reach the lake on the Argentinian side, hurting legs and shoulder included. On the other side, there should have been a bus that brings you to El Chalten (37 km) but this bus was already "fully booked" so we (and some more crazy hikers doing the same) had to opt for other options. Luckily, a friendly couple gave us a lift to El Chalten, so we arrived not too late there, tired but happy that we made it, celebrating it with an very tasty dinner in El Chalten.

Scenic hike to El Chlaten

Argentinian border, 6 km to go still

Since we have visited this town already, we took the bus next morning to go straight south to Puerto Natales, the gate for the "Torres del Paine national Park" where we plan to hike some more days until we fly to Santiago de Chile and then further to Sydney and New Zealand by the end of this month.

Clouds, rain, snow covered summits, costal rain forest, wind - welcome to Patagonia (1)

We left Puerto Montt early on the second of January because the bus left at 07.00 at the bus station. The trip from Puerto Montt to Chaiten is a lovely bus and boat journey (3 ferries) lasting several hours. As usually, the west coasts tend to be a bit rainy as it was in our case, but nevertheless, the scenery was beautiful, especially on the ferries.

Hornopieren

View from the ferry

Once we arrived in Chaiten, we expected to see a partially destroyed village, but this was not the case. The centre is nice and re-build and it does not seem as if this town was destroyed in 2008. But the inhabitants of Chaiten keep one street as it was to display how it looked like. A mud slide from the volcano destroyed the town.

Chaiten

Due to the bus connection and the weather (rain is not the best when you want to go hiking), we took the bus next morning to move on to Puyuhuapi, a little town at the shore of the sea. The bus left on time at nine, but we did not get far, since we had to organize a new spare tire for the bus. So the first store in town was not able to help us to fix this, so we headed to the second store and waited for 1.5 hours with a running engine until the mechanic fixed the tire :-) Nice!. The trip leads through dense forest, mountains covered with snow and low hanging clouds, beautiful! The town was built by German migrants and so, the street names and the beer produced there have funny names: Avenida Otto Uebel and Hopperdietzel beer (3 different kinds: Goldene Jahre, Roter Teppich, Schwarzer Bach). That sounds pretty German!

Puyuhuapi - first day

Puyuhuapi - second day

View to the valey of Puyuhuapi

We stayed in a nice hostel and next day, we organized a car to bring us to the "Hanging glacier", some 20 km away. A hike up to a view point revealed a very nice view to the glacier. On the way back, we picked up some Israeli hitch-hikers (but not for free, so we could split the cost of the car) and it's amazing how many of them try to get a free lift to some other places (in this very small town at least 12 were waiting to get a lift!). Furthermore, we saw a Swiss car in this little town as well! (well, this was not surprising since most of the tourists we met were: Germans, Israeli or Swiss).

The hanging glacier

The hanging glacier

Walking to the lookout

Since there is not much to do else in this town we rented bicycles next day and relaxed in the small thermal baths about 5 km away from town, before we wanted to catch the next bus to the south. We were told that the bus should leave around 16.00 - 17.00 so we waited... for some hours... until the bus arrived at 19.00 :-) This actually caused some problems, since we did not arrive as expected between 9 and 10, we arrived after midnight in Coihaique. The unfortunate thing was, that most of the hostels were closed, so we had to opt for an hotel for one night.

Puyuhuapi

The thermal baths

Next morning, we had some things to organize: since the south is difficult to travel by bus, we were looking for a rental car, we needed a hostel and we needed to do the laundry. And this time, we were lucky! we found a nice hostel, a German guy called Benjamin was also looking for a rental car so we were able to split the cost and we found a nice 4x4 car to drive around. Furthermore, the hostel did our laundry as well, so all our points were solved in no time.
We picked up the car next morning and drove direction south, to the glaciers and lakes there. The weather was perfect and we could stop to take some very scenic pictures before we arrived in Rio Tranquilo where we rented a cabaña (a little house). We wanted to see the "valey of glaciers" next day, but the weather didn't wanted us to see it; it was raining the whole day, so we had to wait for better weather to see something.

Cerro Castillo and our little car

Cerro Castillo

Panorama

Now, the plan is to do it the next day and head further south later.

Happy new Year - Neuquen - San Martin - Bariloche - Puerto Montt

First of January 2014, sitting in the (only) open café in Town of Puerto Montt and eating Schwarzwälder Kirsch! The start to the new year could have been worse!

From Mendoza, we went to Neuquen for several reasons. One was, that the bus ride directly to Bariloche or San Martin de Los Andes would have taken about 18 hours, which we didn't want to do; so stopping after about 12 hours seems to be a good idea. Secondly, in this area dinosaurs were found and excaved and last but not least, some quite nice wineries have their bodegas there. So we started with a relaxed trip by car (including driver) to the Bodegas: Familia Schroeder, Fin del Mundo and NQN. Unfortunately, since it was close before Christmas, the Bodega Schroeder did not open, so we went straight to Fin del Mundo. A nice guiding through the huge bodega (8 Million litres of wine per year) followed by a tasty tasting: and all for free! The second bodega NQN was smaller (only 2 Million litres of wine a year) had a surprisingly good red.
The day after, we took the public bus to a little place where a dinosaur museum exists (since they found the biggest carnivore in this region). The stop in the museum did not take too long (although it was a nice one) so we had time to relax on the shore of the lake and enjoy the sunshine, before we had to get back to the bus stop.

Dinosaur in Neuquen

Dinosaur found in Neuquen

Neuquen

Next day, we left Neuquen for San Martin de los Andes to spend Christmas there. San Martin is a layed back town over Christmas: Sunshine, wind, lake, a bit of hiking, trees.... nice and relaxing. In San Martin, we also had the chance to use our kitchen gear the first time (knife + anti-stick-pan) since our hostal had a kitchen that could be used! So we cooked our own Christmas dinner on the 25th of December (anyway: most of the restaurants are closed on that day as well!).

San Martin de Los Andes

But we actually wanted to do something else there: from Aconcagua, we had some gear we are not using anymore, so we packed a parcel with things and wanted to send it back home... well, before Christmas, all people want to pay there bills in the post office, so we waited 30 minutes in line for our parcel. Usually, this was never an issue, but they've changed rules: we were told, that all parcels need to go through "Aduana" (custom) first. But there is one just down the street, and after, you come back. Although this Aduana office has opening hours, it did not open the week we were there! So once we went to the bus stop for changing to Bariloche, we had a nice packet to carry extra!
As we arrived, we asked the cab driver to stop at the Aduana office first to check whether they are open or not... well, they were not open although the schedule suggested it. Luckily, the owner of the hostel we stayed knew, that there is another Aduana office in the post office, so we checked it: Opening Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 09.00 - 11.30... So we had no choice than going there again next morning. As we arrived shortly after 9, the office was actually open and there was already a queue waiting to pick up parcels. But finally, our gear was checked (note: 45 minutes waiting for a 1 minute check) and we were able to send out our stuff (5 kg less in our backpacks).
Once this was done, we took the bus to a bycicle rental store to do the "Cirquito Chico" by bike. This is a 30 km ride around the lakes in this area, perfect for taking pictures of the surroundings. Furthermore, we went for a tipical dish in Bariloche: Cheese fondue! Quite tasty!

View at Cirquito Chico

View at Cirquito Chico

View at Cirquito Chico

Besides the lake, there is also some mountains you can climb next to Bariloche, so we took the public bus again and hiked the Cerro Turista. The guy from the Club Andina (SAC of Argentina) told us: 4 hours to the refugio and 1 hour up to the top; It took us a bit more than 2 hours to the refugio but almost as long to the summit, so the guy had no clue how it looks like there. Climbing the summit really included climbing up some pretty steep sections, waling through snow fields and creeks and we were happy to have our big boots on; Other people (Argentinians) did the same tour with sneekers, converse shoes and we saw at least one person wearing sandals! But it was worth the effort, the view was great from the top!

Laguna on the way to the summit

Panoramic view

Summit seat

Our initial plan was, that we wanted to travel south to Esquel to visit the national park there, but there are some issues with a plant and the hanta virus and nobody was reacting on our emails, so we changed the plan to head west to Puerto Montt to start the trip on the Carretera Austral. On the way to Chile, we had to pass the border (which is always a fun thing to do!): Firstly, the Argentinians could not find my entrance to Argentina in the system any more but this was solved quickly, since I was leaving the country anyway. But on the Chilean side, the fun begins. Firstly, we waited about 45 minutes in the bus to approach the border / vegetable control post. Then, they unload all the luggage and check it with two dogs (looking for drugs and plants). After this, you bring your hand-luggage for such a control as well and then you queue up for an hour to get the entrance stamp. There were about 8 people in charge of checking the luggage but only one person for the border control :-) and all other vehicles at the border had to wait until our bus was done... what a waist of time! But finally, we reached Chile... but to make things a bit more interesting, in Osorno, we had to change the bus. Reason: None. Information: none. So, our luggage was unloaded and put into the other bus, and you can guess it: there was not enough space in this bus for all of us! So the bus driver was checking with some other companies and finally, we unloaded our luggage again and changed to a second bus. Welcome to South America! :-) But finally, we arrived in Puerto Montt 2 hours late, but we arrived. And in the evening, we found a very nice restaurant just around the corner for some delicious sea food and meat (Doña Julia).

Puerto Montt has not too many sights to see, but the fish market and the fish restaurants are definitely worth a visit. You can see the catches of the day and you can watch the fisher slicing the fish for the customers. Upstairs, you have about 30 restaurants (small ones with about 10 seats each) where you can enjoy freshly cooked sea food (home made style).

Broken boat in Puerto Montt

Fish market

Fish market

In the evening, we joined the hostel crew's new years dinner and party. They invited their neighbours / families for food, sparkling wine, there was a firework at midnight and a karaoke contest after, including the right amount of wine for a long night! Very good fun, so we are glad that we went there.

Karaoke!

Starting into 2014

And now, we are planning the Carretera Austral, a gravel road to the remote places in the south of chile. The idea is, to travel down to Villa O'Higgins (the end of the Carretera) and cross the border there back to Argentina. We'll see how it goes, especially tomorrow (2nd) will be special since we have a bus to Chaiten, a city that was destroyed 2008 by a volcano and it seems to be rebuild partially.

Carretera Austral - here it starts