The Pingouin's Colony!

Yes there was my obsession, getting to the most southern point of this continent, which is done, and Nadja's obsession getting to see pingouins!!

It was actually really cool! I was not that excited about spending one day with pingouins but the circumstances were incredible.

Once we arrived in Puerto Madryn, we desperatly looked for renting a car which was not as easy as we thought it would be. But finally we got to rent one, headed to an old welsh colony named Gaiman where we slept so that we would be closer to our next day objective, Punta Tumbo or the biggest pingouins colony after the Antartic. It was really impressive!! More than 500'000 pingouins are taking refuge in this national park from november to March to reproduce and educate their little newborn.

We had to visit quite fast since, we had a bus the same day, to continue our way up to buenos aires, where we would meet back the two other girls, Sao-Mai and Monica who had gone there after we split in Bariloche.

So we took another bus at around 2 in the afternoon and headed up to BsAs.

The longest Bus Ride Ever...to Puerto Madryn

We got a ticket in an agency, as hitchhikking back up would have taken too long for our plan, but it was really what we wished we could have done. It's cheaper, often as fast, nicer you get to meet people, and safer... you'll see why.

We got up at 5:30 this 21st of nov, and got at the bus stop. However, there was no place left for the three of us to fit in the main bus, and the extremely unpleasant driver told me that Nadja and Alex had to get in a second small bus. We had booked the whole trip with an agency that had oversold tickets and had urgently attritube a small bus for extra customers... But what the agency had not cared of, was the state of the actual second driver..

After an hour ride being pissed because of my driver's behavior toward us, we made a breakfast stop over. Alex and Nadja came out of the van, their face white like snow! Their driver had almost crashed a few times falling totally asleep on the sinous road!!!!

Alex and I tried to talk and complain serioulsy to my driver who for the second time behaved soo badly insulting us!!

But we had to get back each of us in our respective buses. Anxious like crazy alone in the bus I was praying for their stupid driver not to fall asleep again... Surprise! When we got to Rio grande another stop over to change buses, Alex got out from the driver's side!! He had been driving for the second half since their driver was completly asleep apparently due to a hardcore drunk night!!! OUF at least they were safe! We shouted at this totally irresponsible bus Agency that did not really took into consideration such a serious and dangerous situation ( if ever you go there remeber not to pass through Tolkar Viajes, the agency, neither take the Tecni-Austral Buses)!

Well after all this high adrenaline cession, we got into the second part of the trip to Puerto Madryn which came out to be a good compensation to what had happened. We travelled in extremely comfortable buses having huge large seats, with crazy views!! Finally we could rest and enjoy the road toward the pingouins' colony.

Crazy Blog!! Or Crazy me...

I have not written in this blog for now soo long!!! Such a shame... But the blog is chassing me and tells me every day to finish writing the story of this incredible trip I've passed through!

So, since I still have some time before I have to get completly back into my student life (my classes will start again on the beginning of February) I crazily decided to finish illustrating and commenting my Americalatina experience even though it has already ended a bit more than a month ago.

I was about to talk of how, after the crazy "W" trek we did in the most Southern Chilean National Park, Alex Nadja and I tryied to get to Ushuaia!

We decided to take a bus from Puerto Natales to Punta Arena since our adventure spirit had been fullfill by our trekking and camping expedition. When we got there, the bus prices to Ushuaia confirmed our previous research...too expensive to get there. Well, it did take that long for our intrepid spirit to get the idea of hitchhikking and for real this time!

We organized ourselves properly and as it was getting dark and hope was drastically shutting down a huge American Truck, stopped and accepted us three in his spacious cabin. The driver was incredibly nice and interesting, and was going in the good direction...Punta Delgada the passing place by boat tocross the Magellan detroit and land in the Mystic Tierra del Fuego.We even got to sleep in this truck as the sea was too rough and we had to wait till the middle of the night to cross the detroit.

Finally after, taking 7 different vehicule, sometimes leaving us in no man land, in the middle of incredible flat and deserted landscape, we could reach this surrealistic destination of every "globe trotteurs" dream...Ushuaia!

As said in many guide books and comments you can read...The city in itself has nothing special. But the location and the surroundings are still giving something irrealistic and fantastic to this place.

We did not stay very long and soon took a bus ride back up toward Buenos Aires...

Yes! back on the road...but just through my blog.

Yes you've guest...I am back home. It's been more than a week that the most fabulous trip of my life has come to an end and what a nice end! But first let's go back to where I had stopped writing not by laziness but more because I wanted to enjoy every single minute of the trip rather than passing them on the net...you understand of course.

Well a few weeks ago, on the 14th of November (yea it's far away more than a month ago but thanks to my little journal or diary of course updated I know exactly what we've done), we had arrived in what was a lost fishermen town and that is now transformed in one of the most touristic end of the world town. All the chilean patagonian cruises pass and stop a few days in this small and still unstructured port. The reason of this place being touristy is its location of course, settled at the southern end of the Andean mountains and northen begining of the end of the world (tierra del fuego), and its beautifull natural surrounding greatly contribute in making this place unique. It's there that the ultimate part of chilean land, crumbling, forms many small islands in between which fjords and small rivers are forming a natural infinite labyrinthe.

We were in this town, for it was going to be are base camp where we would prepare for the next 5 days. A 5 day walking/camping, trek between the most impressive and famous moutains of south Chile in the national park of "Torres del Paine".

On the 14th of November we gathered as much information as possible in order for our trek to go fine. We found out that buying food was a good idea, that taking appropriate backpack was not optional, that renting a mini stove was maybe going to help us cook and a few other detail like this. Finally we left at two in the afternoon arrived at the park entrance where, although we were well informed, payed a surprising high entrance fee of 30$ each, leaving us with very very little money for unexpected situation.

This first afternoon we walked a few hours uphill before arriving in our first camping site. We settled down our tent and led by our excitment continued toward the point of view from where we would discover the famous, emblematic moutain: "torres del paine".

That's us, we were alone for a nice sunset in front of those little rocks.

We started our second day by a good poridge breakfast, than folded our tent and walked till one time at which we had lunch. Portions where strictly being splet by Nadja who was also making sure that Alex but specially me would cook/eat only what was plan and not more. After a total of an 8 hours walk passing between light green lakes and high rocky mountains covered by low clouds we finally entered the cold and hostile "valle francès". The camping site was nestled in between the "glaciar francès" emerging out of the clouds covering the top of the sharpened moutain, and on the other one the famous "cuervos del Paine". We happily rested and cooked our favorite diner...pasta of course! =)

The next day we again walked another 8 hours to reach our second glacier, the Glacier Grey. We slept unofficialy on the shore of a lacke and the next day headed back to the entrance walking 28km!

This trek was on of the most exciting part of this trip since we were lost in nature with no other choice than walking and enjoying the wild landscape!

I'll go on talking about our Tierra del fuego experience in the next post.

Glacier Perrito Moreno.

Yes we survived the 27 hours of bus from bariloche to Rio Gallegos...and we even did better taking a connection to El Calafate combining a total of 31 hours yeah! Buses are nice and even if the landscape is monotonous for 2000km (only desert, no trees, no mountains, a few sheeps) the trip pases pretty fast.
El Calafate is on the slope of the Southern part of the Andean moutains, and is not as charming as Bariloche but has some similiraties. From there we went to visit the most famous natural attraction of Argentina, the immense glacier of Perrito Moreno.
We rented a car and headed toward the park arriving there by 5pm when all the tourist tour bus were going back. On our way to the look out point every turn of the road was releasing a little more of this magnificient landscape. We stared in front of this impressive mass of ice extending from the horizon and ending in the water of the light green lake for the next 5 hours, seeing 4 huge pieces crushing into the water and listening to the continous groawling ice. We then camped in this same park quite illegaly but it was fun and the next day we could go and appreciate this natural beauty for another few hours at sunrise.
In the afternoon we gave the car back and we started our hitchhiking adventure. yay! i´ll continue later because now i have to visit Buenos Aires, a little hungover. yay! cheers! (here I come again after almost a month). So yes we wanted to hictchhikke but being successless we renounced and took the bus to Puerto Natales...back to Chile.

Ya estamos el 10 de Noviembre!!

This message will have to sum a bit of all what happened in basically one month since last time I actualized my blog!

Let's get started....Around the 18th of October we went to discover this colorfull city of Valparaiso!

Being Chile's most important port it is a quite big city but keeps a certain charm, thanks to its varied colored houses and wall streets, and its famous lifts that takes you up the hills on which the city was built! From there we went to Viña del mar where monica has other relatives.

A few days later after relaxing in what had become our new house in Valparaiso we took off passing by santiago to Mendoza. Our first time in Argentina, consisted in rediscovering the pleasure of laid back south european life with plenty of good wines, friendly people and excellent food! We enjoyed biking in the vineyards and hanged around the nice city of Mendoza.

After this nice Argentinian parenthesis, we came back on the Chilean roads heading always more south! That's how we arrived in Puerto Montt, a quite hugly city being the stereotype of a fisherman town on an english coast (very rainy, a bit messy, with nothing special to see beside the sea and fishermen)! From this starting point the idea was to rent a car and go for a 10 days circuit first in the lake region, a bit north of Puerto Montt, than going down to the famous and remoted Island of Chiloe to finally drive on the isolated Carretera Austral. We respected this plan taking it easy and enjoying the easiness of travelling with a car! We went to Pucon, visited lot's of national parks, climbed the volcanoe de Villarica (2800m) and wild camp in the rain!

After this nice travelling in between lakes and volcanoes in the middle of cows and swiss german alike villages we went to discover this rainy Island of Chiloe. It is considered as one of the most remote place in the world with some very assimilated indegenous fishemen communities. Landscape are very different from what we had passed by and made us think of Irelands. We went of a fisherman boat to observe some endengered species of pinguins on a rainy day of course...it rains around 200 days a year...yes it is very green! =) We enjoyed beeing in a caban drying our clothes and campings tents for a few days in the northern city of the island, Ancud.

After those days a bit enclosed on this Island the plan as cited previously was to explore the carretera austral with our toyota pickup. Unfortunatly, we discovered in our disorganization that crossing from Chiloe to the carretera Austral was out of reach of our financial possibilities. Instead we passed back by Puerto Montt and headed till the very beginning of the carretera Austral until arriving to the ferries where we headed back.

After maybe too many days in this region of Chile, we finally left this long stretching country for the immensity of Argentina. Our freedom and excitement of travelling suddenly came back...Argentinian patagonia incredibly immense and beautifull! Today we are leaving Bariloche by bus that we'll take us 27 hours later to Puerto Gallegos in the last bit of earth before Tierra del Fuego and Ushuiaia!

Santiago de Chile

Ok, bon like I had said in the previous message, we are in a different world...or back to our normal world. Yeah coz its Europe here or the States for sure close to both.
We arrived on monday 15th of October in this modern city of Santiago, after a comfortable although a bit noisy 24h bus ride. Yes a bit noisy since a group of miners were travelling back home. Miners...ha...or whaouu...again there is a world between the chilean miners and the one we had just seen working in Potosi. All of them wearing jeans, nice shirts, with cell phones were listenning to music or calling their wife. They are employed by an australian mining company which make them work 20 days and rest 10 days in their home in south chile earning about 1200USD! Bref, they talk to us about the good wines they have, about the nice girls they dream of when at work and about the very nice place to visit in south Chile! Chilean travel and visit a lot their country.When we were in San Pedro, we met a 3 kids chilean family that had come from Santiago, for a 4 days week end and were sandboarding with us. The father was a doctor and had plan to take two of their children in Switzerland where he was going the week after for a Medical congress!! But added to all those habit and cultural changes, phisycally they are also very different in the sense that there is no more indigenous or very little. Of course the few left are like in Mexico marginalised and banned from modern life.
Bref it has now been 4 days that we've been staying in Santiago and life is easy, the metro works really well and bus complete it so that it is safe and rapid to move intown. We even enjoyed a Football game at the national stadium opposing Chile vs Peru 2-0! Tomorrow the plan is to try to take off and land in valparaiso one of the nicest and most charming city in Chile. We'll see what's waiting for us...