David and Edel

Megatherium ground-sloth.

From Puerto Ibañes in Chile we crossed the green water of Lago General Carrera to Chile Chico, then a short bus over to Los Antiguos on the Argentinean side. We had planned to catch the 18 hour bus south to El Calafate the same day, but it only ran every second day so we had to spend the night. Los Antiguos is quite flat and sprawling, and it took a bit of walking until we found a hostel. Climate is quite different on the Argentinean side, hotter and drier – strange to be back in T-shirt weather again. The most exciting event in Los Antiguos was Edel’s boots getting attacked during the night by the hostel owners dog. A fight to the death possibly – the boots had been left outdoors for a reason…

Blue ice of the Perito Moreno.

The bus south was long, across dry Patagonian steppe and landscapes reminding a little of Tibet with big skies. In El Calafate we met up with Anne – great to see another face from home. Anne’s joining us for a break from the Irish winter, and being too nice for her own good she didn’t protest when we plotted to use the month to drag her down to the southernmost bit of land outside Antarctica 😀 . Speaking of faces from home we also met up with Simona and Silvia who are also a few months into their round-the-world trip, for a nice evening sharing some wine and travel stories. In El Calafate we spent a day around town, checking out a museum which was quite modern and well laid out – with the full human history of Patagonia, including all the megafauna we made extinct as soon as we got here (it had a big skeleton of a Milodon ground-sloth), and photos from the days of sheep-farmers and missionaries helping the indigenous people become extinct. Afterwards we walked down to a small bird sanctuary by a lake just outside town, ducks, geese, flamingos, falcons, shore-birds, and two dogs on a killing spree trying to make all of them extinct.

Ice breaking off the Perito Moreno.

Next day we went for the star attraction around El Calafate – the Perito Moreno glacier 80km west of town. It is the most impressive glacier we’ve seen anywhere – a bright blue 60 meter high wall of ice five kilometers wide, ending in the water of Lago Argentino with lots of icebergs floating around. We went out on the water first – a big hundred-passenger boat which was dwarfed next to the ice-wall. They can’t go to close though – this is one of the most active glaciers in the world and building-sized blocks are falling off all the time.

Next we explored the board-walks on the peninsula that just happens to be perfectly positioned opposite the front of the glacier wall. Every now and then we would hear a cannon-ball bang when another large block fell off into the water below – the glacier is moving two meters per day so has a lot of ice to shed. We were listening to the creaking sounds from the ice, trying to predict and aim the cameras where the next collapse would come.

The Perito Moreno glacier.

Cat in Puyuhuapi.

The Aisén region in southern Chile is famous for a spectacular hanging glacier – the Ventisquero Colgante, in the Queulat national park. We could spot the strange mass of blue ice in the distance from the 18 hour ferry from Chiloe for a while before the boat dropped us off at a cute little village on the coast. Puerto Cisnes is too small to have a map in the guidebook, and we were wandering around a bit aimlessly looking for a bus-stop or station when a woman stopped us and told us she worked in the tourist office. There would be a bus in five minutes actually – the only one in two days – and she offered us a short lift in her car so we could make it on time! The place we were trying to get to is called Puyuhuapi, another small village at the top of a fiord a couple hours away by dirt road – closer to the glacier. The drive passed through some of the Queulat national park on the way, with stunning scenery and steep forested mountains, before finally dropping us off at Puyuhuapi greeted by a rainbow as we arrived. We found a place to stay, and walked around for a while until we found the one little restaurant that stayed open on a Sunday for a great salmon dinner. Ended the day with a walk down by the jetty, watching the sun setting over the fishing boats on the fiord.

Puyuhuapi pier at dusk.

Ice breaking off the glacier.

Early start the next morning to catch a minibus going south from the village, hopping off by the road closest to the national park. We entered the park before the checkpoint was manned in the morning, but there was a notice by the gate suggesting to just pay the fee on the way out, and to look out for pumas. The glacier is strange and spectacular – we could spot it high up between two mountain peaks before even entering the park – from below it looks like it practically hangs out over the vertical rock face where it is suspended. The first trail we walked in the park led up to the shore of a green lake below the glacier with great views towards the blue ice and the two 150 meter waterfalls crashing down from below it. Every now and then a large mass of ice would break off and shatter as it fell down the mountain side – the thunder-like roar taking several seconds to reach us. We had the place completely to ourselves, looking up at the cloud-covered densely forested mountains surrounding us. A longer and higher trail led to a viewpoint closer to the glacier, passing through deep moss-and-fern covered forest on the way.

Waterfalls below the Ventisquero Colgante hanging glacier.

Flower in the Queulat national park.

Relaxing in Puyuhuapi.

After getting our fill of solitude and marvellous vistas we started walking the 30 km back to Puyuhuapi, and got a lift pretty quickly – hopped off at the hotsprings a few kilometers outside the village. Very nice open-air termas – three hot pools and a bigger cold one, plus the freezing ocean ten meters away if you really needed to cool off. Which we did – one of the pools was nearly boiling… “quarenta-y-algo” when I asked – grabbed a small plastic thermometer from my bag to find out – it was 48 degrees! I tried and it was actually possible to sit in for a while as long as you did not move at all… Hopped in the ocean for a swim after – a refreshing 12 degrees 😀 . The other pools were a bit more normal and relaxing. We spent a few hours soaking, then happened to leave right on time to catch the only bus for the afternoon to get us the rest of the way back to Puyuhuapi, and the driver didn’t even want to charge us. We’d had a string of good luck with timing things recently, in this sparsely populated region with very irregular transport, and wondered how long it would hold. The next morning we got on the bus further south to Coyhaique – it had just enough seats left for the three of us! In Coyhaique we found the man who was running a minibus to Puerto Ibañes (from where we’d be able to get a ferry and bus to Argentina and meet up with Edel’s friend Anne who’d arrive in a couple days). We left our bags with the man for the day until his bus would leave in the evening – and set off to explore Coyhaique. It’s the biggest town in Aisén, home to half the regions population, but still a pretty small place. The museum is always a fun place to go in these little towns and this one didn’t disappoint – a completely random collection of rocks, old radios, mechanic typewriters and a stuffed condor! Spotted an antique scale from Jönköping 100km from where I grew up in Sweden. Like in Chonchi on Chiloe the museum first looked deserted, but eventually we found someone to let us in.

Our last sunset in Chile (..for a little while).

The man with our bags showed up right on time and the 2-3 hour drive south to Puerto Ibañes was stunning – Aisén is definitely a region I’d love to return to and explore deeper. The hostel where we hopped off in Ibañes was deserted, but after a bit of walking we found a different one that was open and then headed down to the shore of Lake General Carrera (the 2nd biggest lake in South America) to watch the sunset. Chanced on an open restaurant afterwards, a tiny place with a one-dish menu and a friendly waiter. The morning after when we were walking with our big backpacks towards the ferry outside town a Chilean couple in a pickup truck stopped to offer us a lift – they weren’t even going to the ferry themselves. It will be a bit hard to leave this lovely country.

Headed to Chiloe next which is a small green island with awful weather…it all felt vaguely familiar somehow. We stayed two nights in Ancud on the north coast first, stopping by a museum and doing a trip to a bird colony at Puñihuil on the west coast where we saw Magellanic and Humboldt penguins, sea otters, pelicans and sea lions. Next we headed to the flooded forest of the Chepu Valley, also on the west coast. The whole area sank two meters during an earthquake in the 1960’s, flooding the riverside forest and creating a very surreal place to go kayaking. We stayed two nights at a small eco-campsite with wind turbines and solar showers run by a lovely Chilean couple, who geared us up for setting off on the river at dawn the next morning.

Edel and Teresa near the finish line.

We woke up at 5:30am and were on the river about 6am, still a while before sunrise – set up with a two-way radio to the base. Kayaking up the valley was the easy direction, wind on our backs as we paddled through the bizarre landscape of dead tree-stumps while the sun slowly rose behind the clouds, birdsong breaking the early morning silence. Following the serpentine turns of the river the dead trees started changing into live ones above the level where the salt water could reach, and after seven kilometers we came to a labyrinthine mangrove at the upper end of the valley. Paddling back was harder – while it had been still in the early morning the wind a little later on had been strong enough that we could just hold up the paddle in the air as a sail – and now we had to work against it. It started raining almost as soon as we turned around also. With a couple stops on the riverbank for snacks and trying to wait out the worst of the rain it took us double the time, a full six hours, to work our way back – having to stop and hold on to the broken tree stumps after every burst of paddling against the strong wind. When we finally finished the workout session and got back to shore they had three hot bowls of soup waiting for us 😀

Before dawn in the flooded forest.

Chepu Valley flooded forest.

Palafitos fishermen houses in Castro.

On to Castro in the center of the island next – it’s a cute fisherman village with that charming paint-falling-off feel, and we were staying in a house on stilts down by the water in the palafitos traditional part of town. We stayed four days, had some great seafood and some not-so-great – I got sick for the first time since India and spent a couple days in bed. Edel and Teresa visited a couple smaller towns, Achao and Dalcahue and tried the local speciality curanto at a market – a mix of beef, lamb, chicken, mussels and potato, which was traditionally cooked in a pit in the ground in the old days. When I felt better we moved south, visiting tiny Chonchi first with one of the peculiar Chiloe churches, and having a look in a museum in an old house in town…once we eventually found someone who could let us in. The museum had lots of photographs and displays on the timber baron who used to live in the house – “El Rey de Cipres” destroyed the forests of nearly the entire archipelago and married his first cousin, both surely well respected behaviours at the time.

Chiloe church in Chonchi.

Our next destination was Quellon on the south coast, to get a ferry into the sparsely populated Aisen region on the mainland. While most towns on Chiloe have that charming run-down feel, Quellon goes a step further and look like it fell off a truck and was left for dead. We arrived in the gushing rain with a few hours to spare before the ferry, and went looking for something to eat. Nothing much looked open, but we walked in to one fairly rough looking place in the harbour area that at least had a sign outside claiming it to be a restaurant – it was empty except for two very bored looking larger ladies drinking pints at a wooden table in the center. We sat down at a different table and they shouted for the owner…out walks the big brothel mama with enough makeup for ten people! Edel hesitated and then tried in Spanish “…do you serve coffee, or maybe tea?”. “No” she replied, “purely beer”, and gave us a look that said “…and you shouldn’t be in here should you?”. We decided it would be nice to wait in the ferry terminal instead – back out into the rain!

Before leaving Villarrica we wanted to have a look at the Mapuche museum. The Mapuche are the indigenous people of this region – a people who remained unconquered for very long, fighting off both the Incas and the Spanish for 350 years until falling to the Chilean army post-independence. The Mapuche are still sticking it to the man today – the museum was closed for a strike!

View towards Volcan Osorno from Puerto Varas.

More Villarrica fun – when we got back to eat after hiking in the national park I had what was probably the worst pizza of the trip since India – pre-baked bread and with a fist-full of green mint-flavoured cocktail-cherries on top of the half-kilo of molten cheese! Don’t ever try this at home…

We had better culinary luck in our next destination – Puerto Varas at the south end of the lake district which we used as a base for the next five days. The town sported some fantastic sea-food restaurants and I’m only glad I left before having too big an impact on the local centolla-crab population. Puerto Varas like Villarrica lies by the lake shore with nice views towards a big volcano.

Fern shoots in the Alerce Andino national park.

We went to the Vicente Perez Rosales national park for one day-trip – walking along the shores of Lago Todos los Santos with some nice volcanic black-sand beaches. The trail could have used a machete in parts though. Some of the landscape in the area was covered in ash and re-generating vegetation since the last major eruption of the volcano in the park. On the way back we hopped off the bus to go and see a nice waterfall, which was gushing its way through oddly shaped black lava rocks.

Mossy forest in the Alerce Andino national park.

The next day we went to the Alerce Andino national park, for some stunning Valdivian temperate rainforests. The park was set up to protect some of the last pockets of the gigantic Alerce trees that used to cover much of this coast – the tree can live 3000-4000 years (some of the oldest organisms on earth!), and is now an endangered species. There was no bus the whole way to the park, but we got one to Puerto Montt and then another to the turnoff 8km from the park. The driver of the second bus forgot to drop us off though, adding another bit – we had walked a full 12 km before we even got to the park and 30 km by the end of the days trekking. The forest in the park is really beautiful, everything covered in thick layers of dripping moss, fern and lichens with the gigantic Alerce trees towering above strands of bamboo below. We walked to a waterfall deep in the forest, then to mirror-blank lake Chaiquenes crossing a river where the bridge had collapsed on the way. Didn’t see a soul most of the day, but we met some people just on the way out of the park – lucky as it meant some chances for a lift. Two germans got us as far as the bigger road where we could find a bus back to Puerto Montt then to Puerto Varas.

Mossy forest in the Alerce Andino national park.

Mossy forest in the Alerce Andino national park.

We looked in to visiting a third national park of Valdivian forest – the Pumalin – but it turned out access was still difficult after a volcano eruption last year drowned the town of Chaiten in ash. Pumalin was set up as a private park by US environmentalist and businessman Douglas Tompkins who bought up large tracts of land to protect it, getting some people angry as the park spans from the Argentina border all the way to the coast “cutting Chile in two” at its narrowest point. There’s apparently some cap on how much land he’s allowed to buy each year now. Fantastic achievement anyway, and it has inspired more parks locally – Sebastian Piñera who’s running for president here at the moment created the Tantauco park on the island of Chiloe where we are heading next. Mr. Tompkins himself actually happened to walk in to the Pumalin office just as we walked out after asking about park access.