Hans en Nienke: 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!