La Serena and Vicuna

We left Vallapariso and headed north by bus to La Serena. Founded in 1544, La Serena is located on the pacific coast and is Chile´s second oldest city. Many of the buildings in La Serena still have much of there colonial charm. We stayed in the home of a sweet little chilean woman named Iris. In La Serena, we were hoping to be able to relax on the beach and soak up some sun. Much to our dissappointment, it was too cold to even think about shedding layers of clothing that we have been wearing ever since Ushuia. We went for a walk on the beach anyways followed, as usual, by a pack of stray dogs.

From La Serena we took a short bus ride inland to the village of Vicuna. Along the road we could see acres and acres of grape, avacado, papaya and plantantions along the valley floors.
Uphill from the valleys, the landscape could be described as desert complete with cactus and tumble-weeds.
The remote inland location helps make the hills around Vicuna perfect for observing the stars. As a result, several international observatories have been established close to Vicuna. We booked a tour and talk at Observatorio Mamalluca. Both the stars and our tour guide were amazing that night, and we can now identify several constelations in the southern hemisphere with confidence.

From Vicuna, we headed back to La Serena to catch a bus north to San Pedro De Atacama.

Chile Fun Fact: The most popular junk/fast food in Chile is a hot dog completo. A hot dog completo is a footlong slider with guacamole and somtimes tomatoe and mayo on it. You can get completo´s everywhere!

Colourful hills of Valparaiso

From Santiago, the bus ride to Vina del Mar is only 2 hours west. Vina del Mar (Garden City) is a touristy beach town that is crowded in the high season with beach lovers and vacationing people from Santiago. It was a chilly fall day when we arrived so after getting Jana and Igma settled with their friends we bussed over to nearby Valparaiso to find a place to stay.

Valparaiso is a Unesco World Heritage site and is considered the cultural capital of Chile. It is Chile's first port and from the shore the downtown lies at the bottom of several Cerros (hills) on which colourful houses are precarioulsy stacked. The hills are connected to each other and to the downtown via step footpaths and the city's famous elevators, built between 1883 and 1916. We spent the day exploring a bit of the city with Jana and Igma, ascending the hills in the elevators and walking down through the narrow, steep streets.

We said goodbye to Jana and Igma after having dinner with them at the home of their friends in Vina del Mar. We spent one more day in Valparaiso wondering up and down and around the Cerros and in a downtown park. On our walk we came accross the Museo Cielo Abierto, an open air museum. It was a few streets at the top of a Cerro that showcased art on some of the walls of buildings.

It was cool but sunny so good weather for taking in this amazing city. Time to head North, and the next day we boarded a bus for La Serena, a 6 hour ride.

Santiago de Chile

To get to Santiago, Chile we crossed the Andes from Mendoza, Argentina. The border is super strict there as they absolutely do not want you to bring fruit, meat, or cheese into the country. They have sniffer dogs and bag scanners. The border is near the top of the mountain range. From there we could see Aconcagua mountain, the highest peak in South America at 6960m. The road taking us down the mountain was a series of switchbacks. In this photo we are already halfway down!

In Santiago we met up with Mel Reid, from Huntsville, who is living in Santiago with her partner Alvaro. They were just leaving to go on a bike trip to the North of Chile, to the Atacama Desert. We are also making our way there so we might see them again. We had a nice dinner with them (below) at their apartment before they caught their bus.

We went out that night with another friend from Canada who was spending some time in Chile before moving to Montevideo, Uruguay. Jana, is with her Chilean partner Igma. We had dinner together and met up with them the next morning to travel together to the costal towns of Vina del Mar and Valparaiso.

Mucho vino in Mendoza

A 20 hour bus ride (no big deal after Route 40) north of Bariloche is Mendoza with its´laid back vibe, plazas, cosmopolitain cafés, and wide, leafy avenues. There are lots of trees and fountains adorning the plazas here but Mendoza is a desert town. Irrigation ditches even run beside every main road with fresh water pumping through them.

Mendoza is also synonymous with wine. The areas sourounding the city produce some of the world´s best wines. The climate is dry so they have to irrigate but the consistent weather (warm but not too hot in the day and temperatures not approaching freezing at night) make this area otherwise ideal for growing many varieties of grapes.

We joined in the fun and took a citybus out the the town of Maipu where we rented bicycles had a day-long wine tour. We cycled about 20km in all and headed to the winery the furthest away to start the day. This winery also ended up being our favourite so next time you are out shopping for wines look for the Carinae vineyard (http://www.carinaevinos.com/). They make mostly reds, but have a couple whites and a rosé too. At the Carinae winery the owners are especially passionate about astronomy and Carinae is the name of the owners favourite constellation. Each of his wines are named after a different constellation.

In total, we visited 4 different wineries, 1 olive farm, and 1 chocolate/liqueur/jam maker. At each winery we got a tour and a sampling of 2-4 different wines. We learned how to taste the wine (an exercise involving taking the wine in visually and smelling it before tasting).

Parque General San Martin became a favourite of ours in Mendoza. We walked along the lake where rowers practiced and snoozed in the shade of the rose gardens in this 420 hectare park on a couple of different occasions. One day we rented bikes in the city and rode atound the park and eventually made our way to the Cerro de la Gloria which is also in the park. We tied our bikes at the bottom and walked up for a view of the city and the valley of the Andes. The monument at the top celebrates the liberation og Argentina, Chile, and Peru from the Spaniards.

As travel at Easter is pretty crazy in Argentina we stayed put in Mendoza for a few days sipping café and eating helado along the pedestrian street, visiting the park, eating some good ol´Argentine beef and drinking delicious wine before heading across the border to Chile.

Argentine Fun Fact #7:

Besides rat-tails and mullets, also popular in Argentina is having 1 dreadlock at the back that is longer than the rest of the hair. It seems weird to us.

El Bolson ice cream and Bariloche chocolate

Our long journey on Route 40 ended in the town of El Bolson. Technically still in Patagonia, the landscape has changed quite a bit to mountains and lakes. El Bolson in nestled between 2 Andes mountain ranges on the north end of the Patagonia region in the Lakes District of Argentina. This little town has many fruit and hops farms on its outskirts which lay at the bottom of the mountains. The area produces 3/4 of Argentina´s hops, making for some great micro-brews here.



We would have liked to get a hike in during our stay in El Bolson but as it turned out, we had a lot of time to sample the beer as it was raining when we arrived kept on and off throughout our two days there. We wandered around town and did a fair bit of lounging in the cafe´s, eating helado from the best helado shop we have found yet (called ´Jauja´), and reading.



We also visited the Feiria Artesenal. Anyone can set up shop at the market so long as their wares are homemade. We ate a lunch of empanadas and micro-brew beer as well as delicious belgian waffles with fresh raspberries on top.




We continued our journey north of El Bolson with a stop in Bariloche. This medium-sized city of 98,000 sits on the shores of Lago (Lake) Nahuel Huapi in the middle of the National Park of the same name. The soaring peaks of Cerros Catedral, Lopez, Nireco, and Shaihuenque- all over 2000metres high ring the town- and we saw them when the rain stopped and the clouds finally cleared on our last day there! It resembles a swiss town with log buildings and even barrel-toting Saint Bernards in the main square! It is also home to delicious chocolate shops and is Argentina´s chocolate capital. We took it upon ourselves (with Easter approaching and all) to sample a few of them in order to decide which shop had the best chocolate in town. We found it in the chocolate covered mints (like a Peppermint Patty) called ¨mentitas¨.

Argentina Fun Fact #6:

Argentinians love their naps. Most stores close for lunch and siesta from around 1pm-4pm. They then re-open until 9 or 10 at night. If it´s warm out, some people head to the parks and plazas for their mid-day naps.

RTA 40

The quitensential road trip through Patagonia is Route 40.

Route 40 remains largely unpaved as we made our way north along the western border of Argentina; from southern Patagonia to northern Patagonia, from El Chalten to El Bolson. We rarely saw any vegetation higher than our knees in this arid desert-like landscape. Occasionally we saw a hill on the horizon. Like the Praries in Canada it was often the sky that was changing as the bus floated along the gravel roads, swerving slightly with the looseness of the roads. Sometimes we would get a brief break from the gravel with a small section of paved road but those were infrequent and short-lived.

There is not much else to tell in words about sitting on a bus for two days, so we will let the pictures tell the rest of the story:

Argentina Fun Fact #5:

Argentine ice cream is delicious! It´s called ´helado´ and comes in dozens of flavours that they scoop out of large vats with a spatula. Our favourties are limon (lime) and frambuesa (raspberry) in waffle cones or waffle dishes.

El Calafate & El Chalten

We left Torres del Paine and headed north to El Calafate which is named after a berry that grows in the region. While we were in El Calafte, we met another traveling couple in the hostel we were staying who had rented a car and were heading to Perito Moreno, a massive glacier, which is located in the south end of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares.

We got up bright and early and drove to the park, arriving there before it opened so as to avoid having to pay the entry fee. It was still dark when we arrived, so we sat in the dark parking lot eating some snacks and waiting for the sun to rise. Instead of enjoying a beautiful sun rise over the glacier, it started raining; the fog and rain did not detract from the beauty of the massive glacier though!
Glacier Perito Moreno is 60m high, and is ADVANCING at nearly 2m a day.

While we were there you could here the glacier grumbling, much like the sound of thunder.

Several large chunks also broke off and fell into the water.

We left El Calafate en route to El Chalten. Along the way, we stopped at a small estancia (ranch & motel) for a coffee and bathroom break. The estancia has provide accomodation for many mountaineering expedition parties who first explored the area. Among the famous guests who had stayed at this little ranch, were Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid. After robbing several banks in Argentina, they hid out in the estancia for a month before crossing into Chile.

The Patagonia region is rich in folklore and stories...reminding us of the wild west.

When we arrived in the small town of El Chalten we immediately fell in love with the place.

Known as a frontier town(population 600) and was not formed until 1984. The town still doesnt have any banks, cell phone service, or other similar luxuries. There is a cemetery in town, but no-one has been buried there yet. Packs of friendly wild dogs roam the streets and people still travel on horse-back down the main drag. While we were there, the main street was in fact just getting paved.
One of the best things about El Chalten is that the north end of Parque Nacional Los Glaciers is at your doorstep. Many of the roads in town end in trail-heads into the park. The north-end of the park is made famous by Cerre Torre and Fitz Roy Mountain. World class mountainering climbers consider Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy among the hardest climbs in the world. The small shops in El Chalten also served as shrines, showing pictures of people who had climbed the mountains or died trying.

So, what did we do while we were in El Chalten?

We hiked the many trails of course!

El Chalten is named for Cerro Fitz Roys native(Tehuelche) name, meaning peak of fire or smoking mountain. We could understand why the natives referred to it as smoking mountain - after several days of hiking the peaks of both Cerre Torre and Fitz Roy remained concealed behind clouds. We hiked up one trail to the base of Fitz Roy, but it remained concealed behind clouds. Looking down however, we could see this glacier fed lake.

Our last day in El Chalten, we had planned on taking it easy and resting our legs. When we woke up the sun was shining and the sky was completely clear. Right away we both knew that this would be our SUMMIT DAY! We immediately scarfed some breakfast and set out on one of the trails that would bring us to the base of both mountains.

Cerre Torre (3128m)

In the centre of the photo(below), where the trees stop and the snow begins, is the spot where we took the picture of the glacier-fed lake. Its hard to believe that we could not see Fitz Roy the previous day as we were so close.

Cerro Fitz Roy (3405m) is the highest peak on the right hand side of the photo(below).

Argentine Fun Fact 4:

Rat-tails and mullet haircuts are alive and well in Argentina!