Punta Arenas (Chile)

Ola!

After dropping the car back in Santiago we had only one night to catch up with Carmen Gloria and Alastair. As the boys discussed England's success in the Rugby Cup, the girls discussed the englishmen from our shared latin point of view. I was at the time reading a book called Watching the English (which I deeply advise to anyone living in England, both natives and foreigners) so it was good fun to reminisce about all the things I'm starting to miss about London. Anyway I didn't have much to contribute to the rugby discussion as Portugal was already out of the cup by this stage...

The next morning something really weird happened: as we were on our way to the airport I felt really nervous about this trip. Now I usually don't have this kind of premonitions and so attributed it to tiredness. But man, I was so right! The next time I feel the same, we are postponing the trip! Things went badly from the begining, with our plane to Punta Arenas making a longer than predicted stop at Balmaceda. We were told we would have to stay there for five hours until the next plane flew down from Santiago, carrying a mysterious but apparently crucial extra part. In fairness to Lan Chile, we were bussed to a really nice restaurant for dinner in the meantime. Still we weren't exactly full of confidence when we reborded the plane, without knowing what had been wrong with it in the first place. Fortunately the new part worked as it should and we arrived in Punta Arenas late at night...

There actually isn't much to talk about Punta Arenas except for a couple of things.

Firstly, Punta Arenas is bathed by the Magellan Straight. What makes this notable is the fact that the guy who discovered it was actually called Magalhaes and was portuguese. This might seem very pedantic of me but please forgive me this moment of nationalistic pride - I really needed it after spending three months travelling in ex-spanish territories, discovered by spanish navigators, who gave them spanish names and forced half a continent to speak spanish. AHHHHHH!



The other noteworthy fact is the existence of several penguin colonies. The largest one is Isla Magdalena, a small protected island which houses thousands of marine birds during their breeding season. Unfortunatelly we were too early to visit this island, but some penguins had already arrived at Seno Otway so we could visit them instead. And these had the bonus of being Magellanic Penguins, hurrah! Now here is where the second thing went wrong: the tour company forgot to pick us up for the penguin tour. It would have been too bad except that we were running on a tight schedule and this small mistake cost us one day in a place where there was nothing else to see. Eventually we found another way to visit the little ones and it was well worth the waiting!

For one hour we watched them swim around and bask in the sunshine. They are just so cute! Forseeing the temptation that the penguins provoke on some tourists like me, the people running the place built wood fences and walks around the area.

These try to minimise the impact visitors have on the colony (including penguin-napping) but the reality is that every year fewer penguins come to nest in Seno Otway. Fortunately their population isn't decreasing, they are just choosing more private settings for their romantic encounters. Apparently penguins mate for life but are only together during the breeding season, spending most of the year apart. It was really hard for us to leave them but we finally moved away once Tom promised me one for Christmas!

Bye for now,



Vania

Central Valley & Lake District (Chile)

Ola again!

So Chile... The first problem we were faced when arriving there was the size of the country: Chile's coastline for example runs for over 5000 km. At its narrowest point the country is only 150km wide, so maps of Chile have to be split into three parts! We decided to sacrifice the northern Chile and start our tour on the regions of the Central Valley and Lake District. Feeling adventurous enough to match the chilean way of driving we rented the huge Toyota Hilux that you see on the photo. Please note this type of car is appropriate for driving up volcanos and through the Andes, but not for going on the school run in Chelsea! Needless is to say we had loads of fun driving that thing around while pretending to be american tourists!



And so begun our 3000 km Chilean road trip. We were really glad we rented the van since so many roads were unpaved, in particular the ones leading to national parks or hot springs. Despite the car we still managed to get stuck on our way to one such hot springs. This place was so remote that we had to walk for an hour until we made it to one of the national parks were we met four bemused park Rangers. Which brings me to our second problem in Chile: it turns out that they had just had their worst winter in 40 years! The Rangers had spent the winter completely isolated in the park by the snow, having to walk with snow shoes for 6 hours to get provisions, every couple of weeks. The road had just become kind of transitable in the days before our arrival but the Rangers were still waiting for the road people to come and clear it. They were very surprised that we managed to come so far along the road and not so surprised that we'd got stuck... I like to think we provided some welcome entertainment to the Rangers, who kindly came to tow our car out.


You might be wondering what kind of hot springs must these be to make us adventure through bad roads like that? Well, have a look at the photos of the Termas Geometricas and you'll understand...

Likewise, the most beautiful parks seemed to be the most inaccessible ones but well worth the trouble! Given the hard winter, the rivers were well full and the several waterfalls particularly astonishing. Here are photos of the Siete Tazas (Seven Cups, refering to seven consecutive falls), the Salto del Laja (a pretty wide waterfall) and of the Saltos del Petrohue (where the river is forced to a narrow passage, producing beautiful rapids).

Being such a geologically active area, aswell as the aforementioned hot springs we also spent a lot of time looking at, climbing, driving around or just desperatelly trying to get a clear photo of volcanos. For instance we spent three days in swiss alpine-like Pucon, at the base of volcano Villarica, which was permanently covered in clouds. With not much luck overground we decided to try going underground and visit some of the caves Villarica's eruptions had produced over the years. Here I almost saw my dreams come true in Chocolate Cave! Unfortunately, after close inspection the walls of this cave turned out not to be covered in chocolate but in an iron rich rock which gave it the reddish colour... Blhagh!

We had to give up on Villarica and try our luck with another beautifull volcano, called Osorno. After driving for six hours we arrived at Puerto Varas (our base for exploring the area surrounding the volcano) only to find Osorno also covered in cloud! Tom was becoming a frustrated photographer by this time and the weather forecast didn't bring good news... On the other hand I was quite pleased, having found out that the house we were renting came fully equiped with three doggies!

We were approaching the end of our stay in these parts so the lack of a good sunny day for photos was becoming a bit of a problem. On the next day we visited the pretty Frutillar where the influence of the german colonists still shows in the bavarian style houses. From there we were keeping an eye on Osorno, which stubbornly remained clouded over (you can see it in the background of the next two photos of Frutillar).

As if on purpose, our final day in the region was blessed with a clear blue sky. Tom went trigger mad and basically ignored me for the whole day but managed to get hundreds of photos of Osorno! I've been forbidden to delete any of the photos he chose to put on the blog, so please let me present to you the Volcano Osorno, again and again and again...

The perfect dome of Orsono.... finally out of those clouds!




















Alpaca meets backpacker!

Osorno in the morning...

... and Osorno at sunset.




















And this is a photo of the Lago Todos os Santos (just to show a photo of something else than Osorno...).

On our way back to Santiago we made a stop in the wine region, were we visited the Balduzzi vineyard. Hmmm... We really cursed the no-liquids-on-board-of-planes rule as it meant we couldn't carry any wine bottles with us.......so we had to drink them in Chile instead!

Bye for now,

Vania

Lima and Nazca (Peru)

Ola all!

We are a bit overdue on our postings, sorry for that. We hit an internet blackout zone in Easter Island and Tahiti due to difficult access and exorbitant prices...

Anyway, we are now ready to bring you up to date from the lovely and civilized New Zealand!

After that amazing adventure which was the Inca Trail we made our way for a short stay in Lima. During our journey we had heard the most awful things happening to tourists there, so we were a bit apprehensive. The main piazza is absolutely beautiful and definitely worth a visit and... that's about it. The rest of Lima is either not safe or not interesting. Still, one last night with Nacho turned the main piazza in Lima into THE place to be that evening :-)

With our team reduced to the two of us we headed south. I have always wanted to see the Nazca lines, a group of patterns made in the desert representing varied shapes from animals to geometric figures. The amazing thing is their size and complexity: the biggest one is over 200m in length! The fact that the figures were made on a massive plain creates two puzzling issues: firstly it is really astonishing how they were made without a higher view point from which to direct the workers on the plain; secondly no one at the time would have been able to appreciate the figures since they can only be admired from a plane (except for a couple which a near a small lookout tower). Yes, several UFO theories were also put forward to explain these points. Since the Nazca culture was long extinct no one knows why the figures were made so you can choose your favorite theory. The most accepted one is that they must have had some religious meaning. Being a girl, I think the Nazca people found the desert landscape very boring and just decided to have it decorate by some then fashionable local artists. I'm sorry for not having photos but you can easily find then on the internet, it's worth having a look for them.

You can find on the net loads of advice on how to do the flight, the most common one being not to have breakfast beforehand. I have to say my flight was in a small plane, whith other 5 people, and that I had no indisposition problems. But then again I followed the advice and didn't have breakfast ;-)

One last note: on our way to Nazca we passed by Ica and Pisco, the places most affected by last August's earthquake. The situation there was still pretty grim with most places reduced to piles of rubble and people living in tents. It made us feel a bit selfish to see people living like this while I spent $40 for a 15min flight over the lines, so we made a donation. Anyway here is a link to the Direct Relief webpage, in case you want to do so aswell:

http://www.directrelief.org/EmergencyResponse/2007/EarthquakePeru/EarthquakePeru.aspx?gclid=CLiRw8C7wo8CFSosagodwmqOYg

Bye for now,

Vania

Machu Picchu (Peru)

The final day of our Inca trail involved getting up at 3.45am in order to get to the Sun Gate in time to see sunrise over Machu Picchu. We packed up our stuff and made our way for one final hour's hiking by torchlight. This part of the hike was one of the worst, those Incas certainly had a sense of humour by leaving the steepest part of the trail right at the end!

After four days of hiking, those final steps as you reach the Sun Gate are quite momentous, and we appeared at the gate for a view that was was completely and totally........... misty! Sunrise over Machu Picchu wasn't happening today, we hung around with the other slightly pissed off looking tourists until Sol told us we should continue our descent to Machu Picchu and the mist would clear. Anyway, for those of you who don't believe we got up and trekked there before sunrise here's a photo of the Sun Gate to prove it!

And another with us at the top with Machu Picchu behind us shrouded in mist (note how I'm not looking like a tourist at all with my fake Peru football shirt)!











Happily, Sol was right and as we made our way down, the mist lifted slowly to reveal some spectacular scenery, the holy city of the Incas surrounded by beautiful mountains. Suddenly the exertion of the past days seemed well worth it.

Machu Picchu was not discovered during the Spanish conquest and was found in 1911 largely intact. It is split into religious, agricultural and living sectors and contains some impressive archaeology showing how advanced the Inca civilisation was. We spent a couple of hours walking round before the daytrippers arrived.








Having heard for several days about all the bad things the Spanish did, this all got too much for Nacho. Suddenly his colonialist side appeared when he mistook me for a native and tried to knock me off the mountain!









As we made our way down to Aguas Calientes to get a train (we didn't fancy the four day hike back), Sol informed us that we were getting the tourist train back. A very smart train arrived (owned by the company that operates the Orient Express) and we got on. Just as I was settling down for some sleep, some loud music started, and the ticket inspector emerged from the toilet dressed in traditional costume and ran up and down the aisle like a lunatic. After a brief respite, he re-emerged from the toilet, only this time to prance up and down the carriage sporting a number of alpaca wool jumpers. This was apparently a fashion show, and most of the tourists (the ones who hadn't been trekking for four days) seemed to love it. The trouble was the ticket man was clearly very uncomfortable with his new role, and wasn't at home modelling alpaca jumpers. His unease probably wasn't helped by me handing my ticket to him as he passed, but I couldn't resist and he deserved it for waking me up!

Having spent four days up in the mountains this was all a bit of a shock, but happily it wasn't long before our comedy train pulled into Ollantaytambo. Then all of our journey that remained was to beat off a few more taxi amigos and find the one with the "Mr Duster" sign. One scary taxi ride later we were back at our hostel and managed to drag ourselves out for a goodbye dinner with Sol before retiring to a nice comfortable bed.......

Tom

The Inca Trail (Peru) 25/09/07

Hola!

By now even I am forgetting my portuguese...

Now, the Inca Trail was one of the best experiences we had in this trip so far! It's at the same time an outer and an inner trek, absolutely unique and special in so many ways. For starters, it is done in the same way as the Quechuas did it in ancient times, following the trail they built and that is now kept by park rangers. Only 500 people can start the trek per day, although the earthquake last August has scared many tourists away from Peru so we mostly had the trek for ourselves. Then it is a religious trek, at least for the lucky Quechuas which were allowed to go in pilgrimage to the holy city of Machu Picchu. Also we were lucky to cross it with people filled with good humour and positive energy: Nacho, which provided infinite entertainment and was as usual a mental challenge to handle, and Sol (literally "Sun") our guide, which turned out to be a "soul-mate" of ours, that kept building our knowledge of the Quechua culture, and in particular of the Quechua sense of humour. The rest of our group was formed by six porters, which carried each up to 25 kilos of stuff with an amazing speed. They are local farmers that do the trek to get a bit of extra money. The oldest porter with us was 54 years old but the oldest in the company is more than 60! In camp they always managed to read our minds and provide us with everything we needed before we realised we needed it. They pitched and packed the tents, cooked our food and carried all the common stuff. Finally, there were the Andes, in all their spectacular and changeable beauty. During the trail you are emersed in them, they wonder you, exhaust you and remind you of the timelessness nature of the Trail and of all you see and do along it.


































The Trail starts 45 Km away from Machu Picchu. At the start there's this big map of the Trail, so you can get a preview of what awaits you. Since the Quechuas believed in respecting nature, the trek follows the shape of the mountains. I.e, if the mountains are steep, the trek is steep. And these mountains are steep! On the first day we started at an altitude of 3200m. For the first few hours the trek was easy and flat, on a relatively bare but still beautiful landscape. I actually thought it was easy. But then, we had to climb up to 3700 m where our first camp site was and the trek was so steep that it took me three hours! Blimey!! Nacho, aka Fast Pepe, did it in less, closely followed by Tom. By the end everything hurt: arms, legs, back, abs, everything! Except my head, which was experiencing a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction and a bit of lightheadness or blissfulness, but that might have been the altitute sickness again...























The next day I woke up wishing for a nice trek downwards to which Sol replied by pointing at the top of the nearest peak, where the Trail crosses the mountains at 4500m. AHHHH! Right... OK... There we started climbing again, after a brief stop to ask Tom whose bright idea it was to do this trek only to be reminded that it was mine. What was I thinking off!?! Three hours later I finally reached the peak, where I found Nacho, Tom and Sol laughing hysterically and surely delusional from the altitude. It turns out it was the peruvian rum... If you zoom in at the photo with the four of us, you'll see the highest point of the trail was actually at 4512m, so Sol tricked me by 12 painful metres! But then she gave me rum and I stopped complaining.




































After a big climb you deserve a big descent and so we did for 2h. I definitelly prefer this kind of trekking, although your legs are shaking at the end. As always, a sumptuous meal waited us in camp. After that much exercise we would be happy with anything that came our way but we were always surprised by the creativity of the cook!It's pretty amazing the kind of things he managed to prepare for us up there, including pizza, pancakes and fruit in the morning!





































The third day was shorter as we did most of the trek over the first two days. This time the landscape had changed dramatically and we were now walking through a cloud forest. There were tiny orchids and inca lillys along the way, while hummingbirds zapped past us constantly. By our camp site were the ruins of Wyniwayna, the prettiest of all the ruins we saw along the Trek.


































That night we said goodbye to our porters and went to bed dreaming of Machu Picchu...

Bye for now,

Vania

Cusco (Peru)

Ola!

After saying goodbye to Costa Rica (and to another $25 each for leaving the country) we landed at Lima airport. Now the reason why I'm mentioning this airport in particular is that we ended up spending a lot of time in it. Since our flight to Cusco left at 6 am we decided to stay in the airport. Needless is to say that after a few hours we knew all the shops by heart, including all the available doughnut varieties at Dunkin Donuts (no, we didn't have time to try them all, even having allowed ouselves one doughnut every two hours).


Arriving in Cusco we definitely felt tired, though it is hard to say whether it was from the altitude (3500m), the cold (it is the the middle of the Andes) or the sleepless night. Fortunately people at the hostel welcomed us with a coca tea. This is the same plant from which cocaine is extracted and the indigenous people have been using it for centuries to fight altitude sickness. The US have tried to ban growing it several times but as the locals tell us, it is part of their habits to have coca leaf tea or to chew the leaves while working. Everyone has a coca bush in their back garden, it's a bit like growing basil in England. And its tea did wonders for us throughout our stay in Peru! We have some leaves left over, maybe we'll post them to George Bush!






A few hours of nice revitalising sleep later and we were ready to explore the city. Cusco is an amazing place, with a mixture of old Quechua ( the actual name of what the Spanish called Incas) and Spanish colonial arquitecture. The central piazza, the Plaza de Armas, is surrounded by houses with wooden balconies and the cathedral. On our second day we enjoyed a parade of people performing traditional dances around the Plaza. The Quechua world is full of colour, not only in their costumes (as you can see by the photos) but in their houses, their paintings, their jewellery! I loved it! And Cusco is full of little shops where you can by traditional products. My favourite were the alpaca wool things, of which we all bought socks and jumpers in preparation for the cool nights at the Inca Trail. Soft and cosy and nice... Hum... The only thing better would be to have an alpaca itself but I wasn't allowed one, humph.



After stocking up on warm clothes, waterproofs, coca leaves and snacks we went to bed extra early. The trail adventure would start on the next day at 4 am...

Vania

Monteverde (Costa Rica)

Sorry we have been a bit behind on posting - as you can see Vania did go to update the blog but got a bit distracted.....until I connected the cat up with the USB lead and it disappeared very quicky!

After a boat trip across Lago de Arenal, followed by a fairly bumpy jeep trip, we arrived in Monteverde in the Costa Rican cloud forest. With Monty and Rosanna having already travelled there on horseback (no really), they had secured a room in another well run, friendly hostel. In fact, the hostel owner was a little too friendly with Nacho and Vania had to rescue him from the prospect of a night in a different room! Meanwhile, the five dogs and three cats just about satisfied Vania's minimum hostel pet requirements.


Our first morning was spent on the "Extremo" zip lines, where you speed along wires across valleys and through the forest. They are now everywhere in Costa Rica; a Canadian tried to patent his one and shut down all the others until someone pointed out that people have been swinging through trees for some time. I think the Howler monkeys also had something to say about it too. It was great fun, as you can see from the pictures.

After several more gentle runs, we progressed to the sharp vertical descent part of the morning. The only problem with this was that the comedians, sorry instructors, forgot to mention that the tarzan swing involved a very sudden drop at the start! We have some very amusing videos which we will try and load to the blog once we work out how to do it.

There was plenty more to do in Monteverde, we went to the Reptilarium and caught up with our old friend the Jesus Christ Lizard. They also had some more turtles and lots of snakes. Below is Vania holding a Boa Constrictor (one of the tamer snakes on offer there).

We also went to the Hummingbird gardens and the Butterfly garden (ok, so I gave that one a miss)!

We visited the Treetop restaurant, just about managing to squeeze around the trunks. Happily for Nacho, our visit to Costa Rica coincided with Central America's Independence Day, so Nacho was able to join in the celebrations and agree just how bad those Spanish Colonialists were! The general format of the celebrations seemed to be for everyone to bring along a homemade paper lantern and wave it in the air (so we didn't look even more like tourists at all)! So we reverted to the British style celebrations and went to a bar instead.

Another early start was required for a three hour trek around the Santa Elena Reserve. We didn't see a huge amount, except for the incredibly smelly pig that followed our group for most of the hike, and took a shine to Nacho's legs for some reason. Obviously, Vania found "Charlie" very cute (sigh...).

After several days in the Cloud Forest, we waved goodbye to Monty and Rosanna and headed off for a couple more days on the beach at Playa Hermosa and Jaco.

More to follow soon,

Tom