Chile

From Santiago we headed to Pucon, via Miguel Torres Vineyard. We had a tour around the vineyard followed by a little tasting.

Lunch on this day was the most interesting to date. We had some raw ingredients on Carmen for sandwiches and salad, but the vineyard wouldn't allow us to use their carpark for the picnic. Not wanting to be beaten, we hit the road, and had a picnic on the truck while going along! Cutting tomatoes, assembling sandwiches, etc. while travelling wasn't easy and a few people were a little worried about the knives flying around. This was overlanding at its finest.

We got to Pucon at around 9.00pm, making it a very long day as we left Santiago at 7.30am.

Pucon is a great little town, it felt a lot like a small town in New Zealand. The town has a large lake and the back drop was snow covered mountains and Volcanoes. The main activities in Pucon are climbing the active volcano (Villerrica), white water rafting, biking, skiing and hiking. It is a very active place.

Chris and I both went white water rafting and climbed the volcano on adjacent days. The white water rafting was on grade 4 rivers and was so much fun. There were two boats of Dragoman people, which made it quite competitive. We (the boat Chris and I were in) managed to bump and bash the other boat. The other boat also lost 2 members of crew on one evil rapid, whereas we all stayed in our boat. I think we WIN!!

The next day we climbed Villerrica with a few other Dragoman people and 6 guides. We were very lucky in being able to get to the top. In winter, the weather conditions are not always co-operative and many climbs are aborted. The climb was a lot harder then any of us had realised. It was snow and ice all the way and 6 hours of climbing. We had crampons and ice axes, which meant that no one fell on the way up. I will say there were a couple of times I was out of my comfort zone. It was very steep in places and my fear of heights kicked in. Once we got to the top and saw the smoke from the crater it all became worth it. The views were also amazing, we were above the clouds and could see peaks of other volcanos and mountains.

Getting down the mountain was supposed to be easier then going up. We took off the crampons, put on a device that was like a nappy and slid down the volcano on our bottoms using the ice axe as a brake. Well, that was the idea and it would have probably been fine in better conditions, but it was a little too icy for it to be any fun. The first slope was steep and very fast and many of us lost control, ending up tumbling down the slope. It was particularly dangerous losing your ice axe on the way - this means you have no way to stop yourself sliding, and it leaves the axe lying around for others to impale themselves. I used a fellow truck member as my brake, hurtling into her at great speed. After this slope there were a few less steep slopes that were very icy. Crusing along on one's bottom, hitting large balls of ice wasn't too much fun either. The last slide of the day left me pretty shaken up for a while. It was a steep slope and it was more icy then the others had been. My ice axe wasn't slowing me, so I anchored it in for an emergency stop. Unfortunatly I lost grip and left the axe behind. Now I was flying pretty fast with no way to stop. Chris was ahead of me and I caught him up, smashed into him and passed him. Luckily the guide heard me say no axe and instructed one of the other guides to stop me!! I wasn't the only one with problems, so the guides decided it was time to put the crampons on and start walking down. For everyone else walking down was a great relief and fine. For me at the beginning it was terrible. My fear of heights made me tremble. Luckily one of the guides picked up on this immediately and told me I was going to go down the volcano with him. So for the rest of the hike I linked arms with a young, good looking Chiliean guide ;-)

I learnt alot about myself on that Volcano. I would do it all again tomorrow, if I knew I had someone to hold my hand on the way down!!

A 2 hr drive from Valprasio took us to the Capital of Chile Santiago.

Chris and I had a little siesta on arrival before tackling a reasonable walk from the Hotel to San cristobel Park. We took a asensor to the top of the hill to get great views of Santiago (or so we thought!!). Santiago is extremly polluted and our view of the city was spoilt by the smog.

The second day we took a walk around the city, but it started to rain. We chose the indoor activity of looking around the Pre Columbian Art museum. The museum was great and had artifacts from all over South America.

I will not lie. I was not a fan of Santiago, hence a rather small blog!

Since the last blog we have travelled through the Atacama desert. This is the driest desert in the world with 1mm of rain a year and runs between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean (What doesn´t run between those two in Chile?). Because of it´s location and the Humbolt current it is also very sterile, not much seems to grow here at all, so the 2 days we spent driving though it weren´t all that exciting. We spent 2 nights bush camping in the desert. The first night was at the Hand of the Desert, a man made sculpture in the middle the desert.

The second night was at the Pan de Azucar National Park where we camped on the beach. The night we spent on the beach was wonderful. We spit roasted chickens on the campfire and a brave few (including Chris and I) took a dip in the sea. If nothing else the sea gave us a much needed "wash". We all drank, ate and were merry. The night was surprisingly warm and we got a great night sleep.

From the Pan de Azucar National park we had a long drive to La Serena, so we left the beach camp at 7am which meant getting up at 5.45 to take down the tent (in the dark), pack up and get breakfast. We got to La Serena about 5pm. At this point the scenery in Chile was still unremarkable.

We camped again in La Serena, a few people upgraded to cabins, but Chris and I didn´t see much need. We are tough you know!!

From La Serena we thought we had another long drive, so it was another early start. There is a new motorway and the journey took us half the time planned, so we got into Valparaiso (Valpo in the photos because Chris is Lazy!!) at lunch time yesterday. We took the time to sleep, catch up on reading and generally relaxed.

We spent today walking around Valparaiso, one of that country's most important seaports and the cultural center of Chile. The city is built upon dozens of steep hillsides overlooking the Pacific Ocean, with ascensors to help you up the steeper hills. We took advantage of one of these.

There is a labyrinth of streets and cobblestone alleyways, there is a range of colonial buildings in a range of colours and some more local styled buildings. It is an amazing city which keeps the eyes and mind busy. There is no wonder that Valparaíso is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is often considered to be one of Latin America’s most intriguing urban areas.

Tomorrow we head for Santiago, the Capital of Chile. We will be here for a couple of days before continuing south towards the Lake District.

More photos can be found here - http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/gallery/users/The%20Pratts/

There are some more pictures up in the gallery - see the previous post for the link. Please bear with us while we get used to putting pictures into the blog entries!

The La Paz roadblocks to Potosi were showing no signs of lifting, so we unfortunately had to abandon the original plan to see the mines in Potosi and the lovely city of Sucre and on Friday morning embarked on the long 12 hour drive straight to Uyuni, and the salt flats, instead. There were some roadblocks on this route, however, which we ran into about 5 hours into the journey. Luckily, the outskirts of the towns here are not all that well defined and we managed to follow some locals on a route to circumnavigate the roadblock, much to the disgruntlement of the protesters. They didn't actually throw stuff, but one of them gave us the "slit throat" sign as we drove past - they weren't exactly the wave back types!

We ended up in Uyuni that evening, around 6pm, quite a bit chillier than it had been in La Paz! The hotel's water was heated entirely by the sun, which thanks to the altitude, latitude and lack of cloud made for a surprisingly hot shower that night. This was the night of Digga's 10 shot challenge.

Bearing in mind this is no ordinary line up of single measures (one of the shots was a pint containing beer, tequila and other spirits to be drunk through the nipple of a breast-shaped mug) he made it look (relatively) easy, finishing in under 45 seconds, and earning himself (and Australia) a place on the top 5 board. The top spot, at under 40 seconds, was occupied comfortably by a Belgian woman!

The next day we headed out onto the salt flats (via the train graveyard). Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world - 25 times larger than the Bonneville salt flats in the US. It's big, flat, white and salty, and that's it - it just goes on for miles and miles. You can walk and drive on it. They collect the salt to make... well, salt. We had some fun in the perspectiveless world, taking some amusing photos.

We left Uyuni on Sunday to head even higher and closer to the Chilean border to stay in a hostel in a town around 4400m altitude. This is rather dizzyingly high, and as expected, some of us started to feel a little ill. It was also bitchingly cold that night, but we managed to stay warm in sleeping bags and under blankets. It was so cold in fact, that the next day Carmen started to overheat because some of her antifreeze had frozen in its pipes. Di and I will both fully admit that we weren't expecting anything quite this cold.

Monday was spent pootling around between 4000m and 5020m altitude and taking in some spectacular sights. We hit the Laguna Colorado, geysers, hot springs at lunch and the Laguna Verde.

Then finally we crossed out of Bolivia, and descended from the Altiplano to the Chilean border at a much more sensible 2500m altitude, or thereabouts. We've spent the last two days in San Pedro de Atacama recovering from the altitude and went stargazing last night - guided by an energetic French couple who moved out here for the clear skies. He builds his own telescopes, you know!

Tomorrow we leave San Pedro to descend further into Chile.