Tuesday 29th December 2009

Hotel am See

We woke up in Hotel am See, where it was cloudy. There should have been great views of a couple of volcanoes,but there wasn't.

We headed north to Pucon, which is one of Chile's top tourist resorts. On the way we stopped at Puerto Octay which is another Germna speaking settlement offering Kuchen and Onces Aleman (German elevensies).

Back onto the motorway, we saw a man on horseback, another carrying a ladder and a man on the central resevation waving a white flag, selling tortillas.

The weather was a mixture of sunshine and showers, but mainly showers. We turned off the Ruta-5 towards Villarica town, and then on to Pucon. The town is dominated by the smoking and rumbling Volcano Villarica, but it was nowhere to be seen.

We booked into a modern cabana right in the centre of town, with Wi-Fi access allegedly.

Pucon is a modern town, much more affluent than the other places we have visited. It feels a bit like an alpine resort, and has an eclectic mixture of sushi bars, arabian cafes and a casino.

After wandering around a bit and buying some food, we retired to our cabana to make the nearest approximation to a vegetable bourgignon that Joan could make.

Monday 28th December

We walked up to the bus station, loaded our cases on to the bus and settled down on what must be the most luxurious coach we have both ever travelled on. This was definitely NOT National Express. The seats were "semi cama" - half beds, and there was free, if sickly, coffee, and a film show. The bus was eventually going to Jujoy which is right in the north of Argentina, so a couple of days journey.

It was an easy journey. At El Bolson an English couple got on and sat behind us. He was telling the woman about a mountain ascent he had recently done. The bus stopped a couple of times but around 2 pm we arrived at the bustling Bariloche bus station.

We phoned the car hire company and they came to collect us in a tiny car which barely held our cases. Initially they tried to give us a Grand Vitara but it did not have the right documents to go into Chile. They were out of pick ups. After a phone call they located a Ford Ecosport, which we had to pick up from the airport.

This done, and with a petrol fill up, we headed north to the Villa La Angostura and then to the border. The border procedure was a little more organised. Previously one could have driven through without anyone noticing but here you received a slip which had to be stamped at the office to say that you had cleared customs and migration.

The scenery is less rugged here, the roads are paved and it feels a bit like the Tirol. The cloud was low and it was raining, so despite having volcanos either side of us, we couldn't see them. However we did see a fumarole.



We drove down to Osorno city and headed along what felt like a motorway with blue signs, dual carriageway and toll booths. However there were cyclists and pedestrians on the hard shoulder, as well as bus stops.

We decided to press on to Bajo Frutillar, a german village on Lago...... We booked into a cuckoo clock house, Hotel am See, overlooking the lake owned by Germsan speaking Andrea Lindemann. The rooms were typically German with lots of wood and white quilts.

She advised to eat at the restaurant "Gute Appetit", on the lakefront. Despite explaining that we were veggie they kept offering us meat dishes, and when we ordered a cheese platter, the main ingredient was sausage!

Back at the hotel, the rain continued to pour.

Sunday 27th December 2009

View from a broken down car

We filled up with diesel, bought provisions and headed out of town for the less adventurous part of the holiday.

Less than half an hour later, we were sat on the roadside with a car with no electrics. We mulled over what to do and agreed that Kevin would try and get a lift back to town whilst Joan guarded the car. The first car pulled up but the driver and his wife were from Brazil and spoke only portuguese. After looking under the bonnet, they eventually gave Kevin a lift to the police checkpoint on the border of Esquel. Here the police stopped a lorry driver and told the driver to take Kevin to a petrol station.

Kevin tried to call the number the hire car company had given us, but could not read the script which is different. Therefore the lady at the petrol station helped him. After trying several numbers Kevin spoke to the lad at the Alamo office in Bariloche. Eventually he called back and said a pick up would come to collect Kevin. An old, battered pick up turned up filled with three young "dudes" and a couple of dogs. They explained they were friends of the Alamo worker and were going to look at the car.

About two and a half hours later, Kevin returned to the car where Joan had not been abducted by Rutger Hauer (see the classic road movie "The Hitcher.")

Again the bonnet was opened and there was much discussion, but in the end the car was abandoned on the roadside and we were dropped back off in Esquel. We spoke to the lad from Alamo and he just told us to catch a bus back to Bariloche tomorrow. It appears there is no roadside rescue organised by Alamo.

So we booked back into the same hotel as last night, reorganised our bags and headed off to the bus station. As there are few trains in Argentina, buses are a major form of travel. At the bus station, we had to reserve our seats for the 9.30 am departure. The bus station is eight cuadras (blocks) north of town. We then had a wander around to see if there were any different restaurants open, and concluded that there weren't! So it was pizza again in a restaurant that had only half the things listed on the menu, even though it is next to a big supermarket.

Saturday 26th December 2009

Hosteria Aleman

Cafe Rossbach

More and better health, education, employment and safety - Chilean politicians aren't that different from the ones at home!

Puyhuapi

We ate breakfast and asked the landlady if we could take her homemade cakes with us. She kindly wrapped 2 Stuck for us.

We bought petrol by Cafe Rossbach where we ate last night and headed north. It was raining!

Chilean cows

Our progress could have been faster today but we still had to look after our tyres as we did not have a spare. After our bad experience with a backpacker, we have not picked any more up, but we stopped to give a lift to an old Chilean couple to Villa Santa Lucia. The road to Futuleufu and the border was slow and winding. The countryside is so beautiful that you can bore someone by saying so again and again.

Up at the border, it was chaos. A minibus full of Israeli students was holding things up, and you had to be quite agressive to keep your place in the queue. Still we got through both sides in just over half an hour. Heading down the "welsh" town of Trevelin, we picked up an old farm worker.

Welsh dragon on wagon

Once at Trevelin we found a garage and managed to buy a new tyre. It had taken us six hours and a change of country to be able to do that! Ironically all the roads are paved from here-on-in.

On to Esquel, many of the hotels are shut for the holidays, so we ended up in the basic and dark, Hotel Esquel, but it is a lot cheaper than some of the upmarket hosterias in town.

Both the recommended restaurants in town were closed so we ended up in a pizzeria - the universal option for veggies.

Friday 25th December

Lots of lupins

Christmas Day!!!

Joan woke at 3 am and caught up on the blog. Kevin was woken up by Joan at 9am as we had to be out the hotel by 10.

Ate breakfast in our room. The hotel added Pan de Pascua (Chilean Xmas cake) to the breakfast tray.

We managed to buy bread and Cheese at an Esso station before heading north. It was raining. The sights are beautiful and there are more gushing waterfalls than you could shake a stick at.

Our map shows a suspension bridge at Puerto Aisen as a highlight of Chile, so we went there to see it. It was just a small bridge...

Headed back along paved roads towards the Carreterra Austral, and we were making good progress. Then we hit a section of "ripio." Kevin swerved to miss something in the road and hit the stones on the side. 30 seconds later we were looking at one very flat tyre. By now the rain was heavy.

Kevin managed to change the tyre but this slowed our progress as we now had to creep along at about 30 kph to ensure we did not burst another on the rough roads.

We decided to find a new tyre and stopped at ......, a small settlement on the way to see if we could buy one. At the first house that was signed "Gomeria" (tyre fixing) a kind gentleman came out of his darkened home and said he couldn't do anything. But he was polite and wished us Merry Christmas and told us to go a couple of houses down and ask for Roberto. This we did.

We knocked at another house's door and were invited in. We gathered Roberto was not there but someone would find him. The mother of the house was icing and decorating a huge cake. There seemed to be a lot of folk hanging about there. Eventually Roberto came and took us to his hut, which doubled as a barbeque pit.

He looked at the tyre, signed with a slash across the throat that the tyre was beyond repair and told us to go back to Coyhaique to buy another. This was not an option as it meant retracing our steps.

So we heaed north at a much diminished speed to avoid other punctures.

We entered the Parque Nacional Queulat on dirt roads. It is lush, with amazing waterfalls tumbling down mountainsides. On a bend we saw a sign to the Sendero Padre Garcia, which led us to yet another amazing waterfall.

The foliage was lush and fuchsias grew wild along the road. In most places it was barely wide enough for one car. We tiptoed through the park, until we came across the junction to its highlight - the Ventisquero Colgante. This is a hanging glacier that used to shed ice blocks into a lake below. Regression means that it now feeds two powerful waterfalls that gush into the lake below. But still it is an awe inspiring sight.

It was very late when we arrived there and the visitors and the Guardeparques had gone home for the night, so we had the place to ourselves. Plus, miraculously, for Patagonian rainforest, it had stopped raining.

Initially we just went to the "mirador", but then took the path across a suspended wooden bridge to the lake beneath the glaciar. The sign by the bridge said maximum capacity 4 persons, but it was in English, not Spanish.

After a couple of touristy shots, we reluctantly got back in the car and headed towards Puyhuapi. The Temas de Puyhuapi are Chile's premier spa resort but as we are not rich, we opted to stay in the nearby village. On the way we passed several salmon fish farms.

We opted to stay in the Hosteria Aleman. The landlady was of German origen and we ended up speaking an un-nerving hotchpotch of German, Spanish and English. Joan explained that her father had worked for Messerschmidt in Munchen and the Frau explained her husband had flew Messerschmidt during the war. The rooms in her house were very un-Chilean and reminiscent of a Bavarian guest house.

The landlady recommended that we dine at Cafe Rossbach on the edge of the fiord. In fact, we had a fine meal there plus there was limited internet access so we could at least email our loved ones.

Thursday 24 December 2009

Where we did stay "Villarica"


We had a breakfast of bread, jam and a homemade curd cheese. Hot water was provided in a flask on our table, with a tin of coffee powder. Several young local men were tucking into huge meat sandwiches.

We left Villa Cerro Castillo and immediately the road was paved! On the map, but not in either the Rough Guide or the Lonely Planet, were marked some waterfalls, so we took a detour to Puerto Ingeniero Ibanez, where we could have caught the ferry to yesterday. Again the road was paved.

On the way we came across Cerro Pyramide.

Turning up a rough gravel road towards Levantin, we came across these magnificent waterfalls, which came gushing down, raising clouds of spray. We were the only people there.

We then turned around, retraced our steps and headed to the regional capital, Coyhaique. Initially the road led through the mountains where it was snowing a little.

The countryside then opened out into green pastureland, until we eventually reached the city.

the streets were bustling with people doing Christmas shopping. Pavement sellers sold yapping wind up dogs, plastic horses that trotted in circles, Wild West paraphernalia.....

We booked into the Hotel Luis Loyola on Avenida Prat, which was above the shops in the mainstreet. The posher hotels tend to be on the outskirts of town, but we anted to be amongst the bustle.

Often when you park in towns in Chile and Argentina, someone sells you a half hour ticket. We explained to the lady selling the tickets that we were staying in the hotel and she said she would bring all the necessary tickets to the hotel later.

The rooms in the hotel are a bit passed their best, but brightly decorated. Sofas line the hallway, and we have a chocolate coloured bathroom suite. After speaking to the receptionist in our awful Spanish for quite a while, he realised we were english when we filled out our registration cards. He then spoke to us in an impeccably aristocratic English accent. Weird.

We went for a wander around the town, which really is not that big. There was a craft market in the Plaza des Armes, where we bought earrings with guanacos on them for a friend who collects earrings back home.

We ate in Cafe Ricer overlooking the Plaza. The main veggie option was cheese, mushroom or maize empanadas, but they had run out of mushrooms and maize. They had also run out of palta (avocado) which was unbelievable as there was a chap selling them from a wheelbarrow just outside. Kevin had as an accompaniament "papa duchuesa", which were golfball sized balls of mash potato with cheese in the middle, deep fried in breadcrumbs. Healthy!

Around six we went back to the hotel for a rest before dinner. We had ten parking tickets awaiting us.

Intending to go back out for dinner, we had a lie down. Twelve hours later, Kevin was still asleep.

Wednesday 23rd December 2009

We left Perito Moreno and headed towards Los Antiguos and the Chilean border. The garage was out of diesel, but we were told that there was some across the border.

Crossing the border was a lot less fraught than we had imagined. The Argentinian border building was a swish new structure, akin to those we used to see in Europe, whilst the Chilean building looked like a shed. Hats off to them, there were also building a new check point but it wasn't ready.

Argentinian border

Chilean Border

The Chilean migration officer was amused by our choice of occupation, which one has to fill in on the entry card. Kevin's roughly translates as a "buyer airoplanes" and Joan had put "functionario" (civil servant). When probed she added "politico". He asked for more detail and wondered if she were James Bond. (Actually the last Bond film "Quantum of Solace" was partly filmed in the north of Chile, subbing for Bolivia.) Anyway we made it in...


Chile Chico was a cheerful, brightly coloured border town, immediately a little more ramshackle than Argentina, and somehow the more gregarious for it. A boat sat on the side of the main street.

Ferry approaching Chile Chico

We opted against the easier option of catching the ferry across Lago General Carrera, and instead took the road down to Puerto Guadal, where it meets the Carretera Austral. In the guides it is described as a roller coaster ride, and it was. For the first few miles it hugged the side of the late, with steep drops. It was not paved, but was on the whole a lot less stoney than the Ruta 40.

The landcape was immediately different. Gone were the bleak, infinite vistas of Argentina. Instead there were hills, lakes and fiord like scenery. There were a few signs of mining, and it says in the guides that this is an area of gold and silver extraction.

We came across a delivery lorry pulling a truck out of a ditch. A few minutes the same said lorry bundled past us, and made us wonder if it had been the same lorry who had put the truck in the ditch.

A few bemused cows grazed on the roadside.

The road was beautiful if slow - taking 3 hours 20 to cover the 111 kms to Puerto Guadal, crossing several bridges including this over the Rio El Maiten.



In Puerto Guadal, a modest lakeside settlement, we bought more petrol and headed down to the Carretera Austral (CA).
Lupins on the roadside







The CA was General Pinochet's great scheme to try and unite Chile with a single road right to the very bottom of the country. With the mountains and fiords in the south it became a mission impossible, and only (sic) stretches down to Villa O'Higgins. To reach the very south, it is necessary to cross over into Argentina. What Pinochet couldn't have realised is that the CA would become an alternative tourist destination for erstwhile explorers like us, armed with a 4WD, credit card and desire to walk on the wild side.

The rain set in. The road was bumpy, with many bends, winding its way into the mountains. We wanted to see Volcan Hudson which blew its top in 1991, with devastating effects on the neighbouring Argentinian sheep farming economy. However it was shrouded in cloud. Many of the hillside still have the remains of trees scorched by the eruption, littering them. Most of the shrubs and trees growing are very young.

Progress was slow. We had though of reaching Coyhaique, but after 4 and a half hours we had only covered 188 km. Tired by the constant driving on rough roads, we reached the settlement of Villa Cerro Castillo - a small, cobbled together settlement, populated by scruffy dogs. It was 8:30 at night and seemed shut up.

The recommended lodging place was full, but the landlord pointed us to a dark, dusty shop opposite and said that the lady there had a cabana. We preferred to stay in a cabana so we could cook ourselves. Mistake.

Where we did not stay...

She took us to what looked like a wood cabin. Inside it was held together by nails, chipboard and wishful thinking. It was really a shanty. There was a log burning stove in the kitchen, strewn with dirty pots and the bathroom - well, let's not go there........

There was no way we wanted to stay there, so we drove round again eventually finding a much more respectable looking building, with a clean dining room and advetisement for cheese sandwiches in the window. Here we could at least eat. The landlady showed us a sparce but spotless bedroom up steep stairs. It was even en suite.Outside, in the rain, two men were carrying recently slaughted sheep into a house. None of the three stores in town had any bread.

Having ascertained that the landlady cooked with oil, not lard, we asked her if she could go off menu and make us an omelette and chips. This was wasked down with a bottle of her finest wine (Casillero del Diablo Cabernet Sauvignon.) The landlady was looking forwards to shopping in Coyhaique the next day. Fed and watered, we were exhausted.

d.