April 12th 2019: Argentina again, better weather as well.

Hi guys, probably one of the last blogs from the Andes. We're about to cross the pampa and head for Buenos Aires. For now therefore a few more 'vegetarian pictures' as my brother calls them. He questioned if we ever met people on our trips. We do, in fact quite often. We give hitchhikers a ride regularly. And you meet nice people in the most beautiful spots.

This is the hanging glacier in Parque Nacional de Quelat. The weather forecast from my favourite site www.yr.no gave us a short window to see it while staying reasonably dry. You can't win them all ay?

By now Nienke does bridges like this two or three times easily, just for fun. I know, the panorama function of my Huawei has a bit of problems with objects that are too close. No photo shopping!

It was getting colder quickly. Not so easy for a man with MMS, male menopausal syndrome. At night I'm trying to sleep under the one sheet my lovely wife allows us to have on our bed, trying to ignore the sound of teeth shattering polar bears who try to find shelter on the deck of our IKEA cabin, for the howling polar winds and relentless rains turn Chile into a hazardous country. Getting up for a wee is particularly dangerous as you easily could break of one of your frozen toes, or bang your head against one of the icicles hanging from the ceiling. Meanwhile my princess is sleeping as a baby at sub zero levels.

Next day starts cold again as we start our climb to the Chaiten volcano. Gigantic leaves stand alongside the track. Someone on the iOverlander app said the track was 80% steps, which was a bit of an exaggeration, but it was definitely 79%. We can now easily do the Borobudur before breakfast!

This Chucao (Scelorchilus rubecula) followed us almost to the top. A rare bird that only lives in the Patagonian Andes.

Many of the reviews we read mentioned people returning somewhere halfway, exhausted of the many steps, some of which were about the size of an average Chilean. I'd say, it was well worth the effort.

An amazing, still active volcano. This thing was quite a surprise when it erupted in 2008. It's existence was not known before. A pyroclastic cloud nearly wiped out the town of Chaiten and authorities abandoned the town. Nienke will explain in a minute.

No selfies, just some nice Brexiteers we met on the top and agreed to exchange the service of taking each others pictures.

That's what I said.

This a giant tree called an alerce, its a Fitzroyan cypress). These giants can grow to 60 meter height and a diameter of 5 m. Apparently some of these trees are about 3500 years old. The guy who is developing some apartments next to my parental house 'accidentally' cut down 2 conifers on my mothers property. This to give his future buyers more sun. Well scumbag, I've got a bag full of Alerces seeds with me! That'll be a wall even Trump will be jealous of.

The Norwegians from Yr predicted even more rain, hail and snow so we decided to skip the northern part of the Carretera Austral and cross the Andes again to re-enter Argentina for the fifth time. We stowed two soaking wet French hitchhikers in the back of our car (and made it to their 'Hall of fame'). In La Junta, a small village that was half devastated by an gigantic mud flow in December 2017 we said goodbye to Charles and Pierre and gave them our last fruits since we were not allowed to take them over the border. In our rear view we see the dark clouds gathering over Chile.

Like we thought, the Andes would stop the bad weather. On the Argentinian side the sun broke through and beautiful rivers full of trout appeared, lined by green bushes.

Nienke had her eyes set on Parque Nacional Los Alerces. But irst we stayed a night at Pablo's, a very nice Spaniard who had a great selections of home made 'fiambre', 'jambon crudo', wines, whiskeys and other great stuff. Unfortunately also a cat who kept trying to enter our cabin. After 2 showers he stayed away.

We made it to the NP visitors centre without problems. While Nienke discussed options with a ranger I made some pictures from maps hanging around. Nienke got a map with walking tracks and another with camp sites (why do it easy when you can make live difficult). The very first walk, about 2 km from the rangers office was not to be found. We thought it had to do with some road works, but as it turned out a new CEO in the head office had a friend who owned a design and print business. He was allowed to make new maps of the area. All the numbers were changed and exact locations was not one of the priorities. The track we now missed turned out to be on a completely different spot. The ranger talking to Nienke here was so friendly to give us an old map that indeed displayed the landmarks we passed.

Thanks to that map we found some nice short walks. At this spot we stumbled upon a couple admiring the colours. They did not hear us approach them and when I finally appeared in her peripheral vision she shrieked and almost jumped in the neck of her partner. Warning about puma's being around had made her quite jittery.

In the summer you can find half of Buenos Aires here, but now it was quiet and serene. Too busy (at least 3 other people on the track) still for puma's to hang around.

Our lunch site, a view over Lake Menéndez towards the Torrecillas glacier.

Tired of trying to find hidden tracks we decided that with the temperature gauge reaching almost 20 degrees it was maybe time again to see if our tent was still intact. We found a nice lakeside spot and got our e-readers out. About 2 hours later someone walked over to us and told us our location was quit 'peligroso' (dangerous) as the old alerces flanking the beach had the nasty habit of suddenly falling over.

No problems, with my Swiss army knife I cut of enough branches of the fallen alerces to treat us to a nice fire in the evening.

In the morning it took a while for the sun to chase the fog over the lake away. Although we were awake at a decent time it took till midday before our tent had dried in the sun.

Reached El Bolson in time to do another walk. We now do about 2-3 Tongariro Crossings a week. Have to admit we cheated a bit on this one by taking 'the Beast' up to the parking and skipping the most difficult part that way. Still a very steep walk up to Cerro Piltriquitrón with it's El Bosque Tallado. A sculpture park made of fallen trees.

Artists from all over the world used chainsaws and chisels to create some amazing sculptures. It's all set in a nice tranquil forest with woodpeckers and many other birds.

This 'fallen giant' was really funny. See how the horns on his head have 2 more faces. A park like this would be a good idea for Kapiti as they do want to attract more visitors.

We even climbed a bit further to find a small refugio with a great view. Decided not to hang around for the night and to return to El Bolson, a town founded by hippies, so we could go to the feria artesan in the morning.

Turned out hippies do not get up that early. Around 12 the market had still not started so we made our way in the general direction of Bariloche. Several warnings on the internet about crime in Bariloche had made me a bit worried about parking the Beast with all our belongings for the scumbags to grab.

So we headed for Villa Llao Llao. Great views. That hotel is apparently the best in Argentina, but since Nienke did not want to play golf with me anyway, we spent the night in a hotel around the corner.

Scaremongered about car break ins we did not even dare to leave our car lake site to kayak on the stunning lake. So, as we do more often, we followed the advise of the nice waitress from the hotel and headed north where we would find a very nice valley. She was dead-on. Absolutely stunning. Wasn't for sale unfortunately.

Took another side road to drive to Lago Traful. Another lake where you don't want to be in the Argentinian summertime, but now, it was deserted, great.

As we are traveling without a plan we had not booked accommodation. Drove past this log house on the banks of the lake. Just when Nienke was trying to call the owners they turned up. We agreed on the price on one condition: 'Mi marido quiere ver futball, un partido muy importante, Ajax Amsterdam y Juventus Turin'. For the Kiwi's: 'he needs to watch footie'. Being an Argentinian, the owner of course understood the problem and after a quick visit to the near bye village to pay for the Direct TV I was sitting on the couch with a beer in my hand watching my team playing a great game. One all in the end, still in the race. Finished a nice Malbec next to the fire outside under the milky way.

Said farewell to this nice lake in the morning.

Picked a basket full of blackberries roadside, as the locals do. Found an almost hidden track to a remote lake. Although there were birds and nice trees the track was mostly covered by bamboo. A pest here in Patagonia. Even if you adore panda bears, never, ever, ever, plant bamboo. It's horrible stuff and you'll never get rid of it.

On the beach we found fresh puma tracks. No sign of puma's though. As they had told us before, don't worry if you haven't seen them, they have seen you!

And so, with no more then a week of the Andes ahead of us, I end with the sunset of yesterday evening over Lake Nahuel Huapi.
Cheers.

March 31st 2019: Carretera Austral

One of our favourite songs and one of our favourite instruments.

Sung-Min Ahn's arrangement of 'The long and winding road' of the Beatles.

I love this Beatles song because of the lyrics and melody. And it fits so well with the roads we are traveling now, long and winding roads that in the end will bring us home again.

After another night in Lago Posados we drove the back road route to Paso Robalos, a rural border crossing to return to Chile. The Argentinian part of the route was stunning, with snowy mountains appearing and lakes as still as a mirror.

Looking towards the border a canyon shows and we saw many birds including the black necked swans again. The road passes through large estancias (farms) where we waved at gauchos on horses inspecting the herds with their dogs. The border crossing was easy again, the computer worked!  The Argentinian guy stamped the wrong day in my passport as he hadn't adjusted the stamp yet from the last visitor. The Chilean guy mainly wanted to find out how much we paid for the car - busy job working in border control!

From the border you drive through National Park Patagonia, which is one of three very successful restoration projects started and then donated to the Chilean state by Doug Tompkins (billionaire founder of North Face outdoor brand). They bought a very large sheep farm in 2004 and in the last 15 years have been working on bringing the land back to it's original state.

And with lots of success, there are many hiking trails to enjoy fantastic scenery and many animals to be seen. Amongst those this bird of prey that was wandering close to the parking lot of the park entrance building and not really fazed by having its photo taken.

There is a very interesting and well laid out interactive museum in this park and it shows that this park was in private hands first and no money was spared to build great facilities. The museum explains the history of the park and provides information about the wildlife etc. It also delivers a stark message about humans destroying the planet by using way too much water, producing way too much waste and a sobering display of how many animal species have become extinct in the last 200 years.

Driving out of the park to meet The Carretera Austral - the famous road we will be driving south first and then north - you drive 'into' the turquoise Rio Baker. What a colour, never seen anything like it! All the way to Cochrane to the South you see this river from the road above, just stunning. We decided to stay in Cochrane for a couple of nights to do a walk in the park.

The next morning we drove back into the park to the start of the walk we wanted to do (1.5 hrs..:-(, we should have gone camping!). On the way we saw a long line of Quanacos standing along this hill, ready to cross the road heading for the valley.

We did a 17 km loop walk following more or less the river inland. Some beautiful vistas even though it started out cloudy. A few very steep climbs but rewarding as well. We met an English couple that had walked down from the north in three days and a guy who was camping next to the creek and had a sleep in obviously.

The red colour of this mountain was a first for us in Chile, for us colour means Argentina but hey this was beautiful. On the way back the sun came out in full but unfortunately we couldn't see this mountain anymore so not another sunny picture. At the 8 km mark we crossed this very high swing bridge (which Hans calls hanging bridge in his Dutch-English). I am afraid of heights if it's steep down like this, no fun for me to have to cross this. But of course I did, just looking straight ahead and not down, not even for one second just terrifying. It still amuses Hans as you will hear while I just worry that he drops down in the gorge while making fun of me..

It surely was a beautiful spot for our lunch, the canyon is deep and the water the clearest blue.

We had another lazy day in our hospedaje in Cochrane while the rain bucketed down. We had a nice dinner with Connor from Ireland who we had given a ride together with the English couple Chris and Mary we met earlier to the campsite at the park entrance after our walk. Also met some nice Swedes at the hospedaje. Nice to sit next to a roaring fire when it pours..

From Cochrane we decided to head south to  Villa O'Higgins, the little village where the Carretera Austral ends (or begins, for us). On the way we visited and spent the night in Caleta Tortel, a tiny village on the lake edge without roads but with 7.5 km of boardwalks and stairs. The 448 inhabitants have to park at the top and then log their stuff around by walking or using boats. The fire brigade here is a small boat with a load of hoses on the deck.

It's a small and remote village and like most remote towns it's a bit rundown, with a few shipwrecks parked here and there. Quite a few pretty new 'plazas' all with wooden structures in the typical design of the area. Also a few burned down houses right on the waterfront where the brigade literally missed the boat.. everything is in wood so the fire risk is huge. In our cabin the geiser almost blew up, which shows how easy it can go wrong.

Never ever name your brand new boat 'Invincible' - what could possibly go wrong?! I had exchanged whatsapp messages to book a cabin for us but once in Tortel no-one was at home and I no longer had any reception. It was 5.30 so what to do? I started walking around and the advantage of a tiny village is that I managed to start talking to just the right lady who was filling in for the owner who was away for the weekend. She said she expected us at 8pm - no idea where she got that from but we were happy to have found her as it started to rain and we were keen to start the log fire! We thought we'd go out for another beer at the micro brewery we visited in the afternoon (not much going on in Tortel) but in the dark with hardly any lightning it's a bit tricky those slippery stairs. The beers were good and the owner told us he brewed 300 liter each week. After we asked if locals were his clients he said no they drink at home. So lots of people get thirsty in Tortel or the owner has a significant drinking problem :-)

The next morning, after making ourselves a nice coffee with our camping stove while waiting for the ferry to return we made the trip over a very tranquil lake to continue to Villa O'Higgins. First class of course.

What an awesome drive, all gravel roads from Cochrane south but no problem for our 'Beast' and Hans. The village is set in a valley surrounded by peaks with glaciers that drain water into a massive light blue river and many lakes. We found a nice cabin and more important, the local cafe that had a sports channel so Hans could watch 'Oranje' play Germany for the qualification of the European Championship. The owner liked futbol too so he watched with us and heard Hans use his best Dutch language when the Germans scored in the 90th minute and won 3-2. Oops.

I'd read about a nice hike which we embarked on the next day, about 5 hours back and forth to three miradors over the glaciers and the lakes.

Needles to say a good work out again but beautiful. We saw a lot of deer poo and deer tracks but unfortunately not the owner, the famous Huelmul deer that only lives in these remote parks. We were lucky enough to have seen one before near mount Fitzroy in Argentina.

O yes, why not- let's drive down to the sign that marks the end of the road - from here it's only the boat to Argentina. We met lots of travelers (non car owners) who hiked (2 days) and took the ferry to cross from El Chalten in Argentina to Villa O'Higgins in Chile. Pretty cool. We met Chris and Mary again here and they bought us a beer in the evening, the day before they were going to do this trip to cross to El Chalten. Good on them and very nice to have a beer and a chat. Oh well, we had to skip the experience of hiking across the border, but we do prefer traveling with our 'beast' and having so much freedom to go where ever we want.

Early in the morning we started our return trip and the clouds in the valleys look like water, very surreal.

The drive back to the ferry was mystic and beautiful. In Cochrane by middag we decided to drive further north to Rio Tranquilo. We picked up Minerva from Finland and Andrea from Germany who were the lucky winners of the day's free three hour trip to Rio Tranquilo. Nice girls to have a chat with, they only met a few days before too. North of Cochrane we stopped at this point where two rivers meet, which provides a cool spectacle. Mixing of the colours of the rivers as well as some really cool waterfalls.

The views became truly spectaculair driving around Lago General Carretera with the evening sun turning it all shades of green and blue.

The islands almost seem to be floating on the water. We spent the night in Rio Tranquilo to visit the 'catedrals de marmol' (cathedrals of marble) the next morning.

The village exists and thrives because of this natural wonder, so everyone is in the business of either providing accommodation, food or boat rides or kayak trips to the caves.

We slept in a bit so missed the first trips but ended up with only 5 in a boat half an hour before most boats were leaving. With two Russian girls and a very nice American girl, who took over steering the boat for a bit which we thought was funny but she later told me the skipper had a strong alcohol smell around him (at 11 am!).

The two guys did skipper us back and forth in one piece and told us a bit about the caves in Espanol mucho rapido. They mainly kept pointing out which rock looked like what - see? an elephant! mira, un gorilla and so on. Bit annoying really but I guess that's what they think tourists want to hear.

It is a truly amazing site these marble caves. The water is so clear and so blue, you can see the marble rocks under water everywhere too. We went into a few side arms with the boat which was cool.

Unbelievable how wind and water can produce these fantastic sculptured caves. One lone standing section of caves is called the cathedral and another the chapel. The chapel is also in use as a chapel and you can get married there, pretty awesome!

The water itself provides for pictures that you just have to print on a canvas and put on the wall at home, humans cannot do a better job at producing art I'd say!

After the boat trip we headed north to Cerro Castillo, also a famous hiking area on the Carretera. Andrea and Minerva were lucky enough to be standing at the road side just at the right time! We found out after about 2 hour drive that remainder of the road to Cerro Castillo was closed until 5 pm and decided to do the detour along the smaller roads as we wanted to get to Puerto Ibanez and the waterfall there first anyway, we may as well spend the night there. Andrea and Minerva opted to get out to wait for another ride once the road opened.

About 1 km into the other road we had to cross this very, very narrow suspension bridge which in itself wasn't a problem if it hadn't been for the fact that on the wooden beams a large sharp piece of wood was sticking out....And yes, we drove into that little sharp splinter which blew the side of our brand new tyre to pieces. We heard it loud and clear go poof! Damn *&@#;%$!!! Seeing the damage done it was clear that was not going to be repairable...even more $#@&#$p;^!!. Hans kept his cool and changed the tyre in no time so we continued our journey.

A bit challenging and sandy at times but a very nice back road drive alongside a few very nice lakes, ending at the very large Ibanez waterfalls where Hans had a well deserved beer as the sun was setting. In the village we found a room in a hospedaje and a typical Chilean dinner con papas fritas which suited us fine by that time! In the morning we drove to Cerro Castillo but decided to skip staying there and doing the (expensive) walk up to the lake.

A mirror lake along the road with the Cerro Castillo peaks in the background. During breakfast I managed to call the Toyota garage in Coyhaique and make an appointment for Monday to have the passenger airbag replaced. I was quite proud of myself being able to do all of this in Spanish as the Toyota guy didn't speak English at all. Toyota in Punta Arenas had told us there was a national recall on 2010 4 Runners for this issue. They didn't have the airbag available and also needed the car for two full days. It was too cold and wet in Punta Arenas so we took the gamble of being able to do it here, the only town of any size on the Carretera with a Toyota garage. The rest of the Friday afternoon we spent hunting down a new tyre but the brand we purchased nobody was selling in Coyhaique...go figure! In the end we had to buy two new tyres of another brand which now provides us with a brand new spare tyre. Annoying to spend all this money as we just did that in Punta Arenas 5 weeks ago. We managed to find a last minute run down cabin just out of town, very nice guy but he hasn't got a clue when it comes to maintenance. We were not going to spend 5 more nights there so returned to town for better reception and are now in a very cosy and comfy new cabin on the hill. A small break in our travel to do some reading, planning, blogging and sleeping....very nice! Hans had to make a photo of this very special shampoo when we were shopping and yes it's funny and yuk at the same time :-) ciao hasta luego xx