I miss Venezuela! It is a living country whereas Chile is more modern, like Europe. There is no chaos in the streets here, no people selling food on every corner, no musical overkill and salsa music in a café is somewhat foreign because it totally does not fit to the county’s atmosphere, it is artificial.
So, there happened a lot during the last weeks. I had simply no time to write anything because we were on the road hitchhiking basically in unpopulated land. Where did I stop last time? Isla Chiloé? I think so. Chiloé is different from the rest of Chile. It is a funny cultural mixture and more than only tranquil. I have to underline that we are travelling quite late and aside of the main season. The summer is officially over and after mid of March nearly all touristy places are swept out. This counts especially for Chiloé where we did not meet any other tourist-looking individual. All restaurants are closed, though if you find anything open you are only able to order beer because “The cook is not working” or “The cook is out” or “Come back in high season.” … this is it. They have their own architectural style of small warm wooden pretty houses, you just love them. In the western part we spent some days in the new national park and walked some 20 kilometres alongside the lonely beach and over green hills, camped at lonely beaches with stormy Scottish-like weather and observed many Campephilus magellanicus. The astonishing thing so far about the southern fauna is that it is really, really trusting. Nearly all birds you can approach so closely, I have never seen this before. They do not fly away; they just look at you and always keep a steady distance but do not flee. Like if they had nothing to be scared about from humans.
After having spent nearly a week on Isla Chiloé we took a 36 h boat trip from Quellón to Puerto Chacabuco near Puerto Aisén, now in the northern middle of Patagonia. The cruise was worse than expected because the weather played a different song than we wanted. 36 h of rain and deep clouds, we barely saw all the small nice Patagonian islands because everything above 50 m was covered by clouds :-/ But while arriving to Chacabuco we could see some snow fields reaching down to the ocean water. This was strange because a few days earlier we hat hot sun up in the north without having to bother about wind, rain and even snow. Strange geography here. You want hot dry summer and cold snowy winter in one holiday trip? Come to Chile baby! Mhm.
The adventure started from Coyhaique down south where we hitchhiked the whole way until El Calafate in Argentina. First we went down to Puerto Traquilo at Lago Carrera (Lago Buenos Aires). Hitchhiker’s paradise!!! Never waited more than 20 or 30 minutes for a car to take us; sometimes the first car picked us. The last 200 km we rode in the back of a cattle truck and visited the marble caves in Puerto Tranquilo. It was nice but just cruising through this gorgeous landscape is enough, you really do not need to visit any tourist attractions here, just take a look around you and you are sufficiently satisfied! Sharp mountain peaks with snow and ice fields, low sun with deep blue and green lakes … oh dear.
We lost our guide book ‘cause we forgot it in a car. Then my allegedly unbreakable water bottle broke in two pieces after falling out of my backpack (Meanwhile I contacted the support, they send me a new one for free!!). Hmm, Titanic bottle. Between Chile Chico and Los Antiguos we crossed the border and could see some real Argentineans. Cool. Chicas muy muy lindas in every corner, this is really hard to bear! So, my hard rocking amigos, the coolest trip followed from shortly behind the border on the back of a Pick-Up down south some 600 km over unpaved road (Ruta 40). Catalina and her dad from Argentina made a road trip south to Ushuaia and took us this day until El Chaltén. We had to share like one square metre with a bike, our big backpacks, fat stones and a spear wheel. My heart bled as we continued with them the next morning to El Calafate because Chaltén is such a nice place to hike around. Awesome mountains with the famous peek Fitz Roy .. but Daniel wanted rather to use our opportunity to get further south for free. Hmm, it is a bit difficult because he always complains about not having any money. But the truth is that you can not travel without money so in some parts you _have_ to pay to get around. I do not accept to miss half of the coolest things on this trip which might be my only time in my life here, just because Daniel has problems with his money. In future this is going to be a big problem between us … we will see. The northern part of Patagonia is like you know it from everywhere, especially the Chilean side. But on Argentinean side it is just Pampa, Pampa, Pampa. This Pampa is very similar to parts of the Atacama Desert. Just flat nothing with flat grass or bush land, Guanacos, Ñandus, for thousands (really) kilometres. From time to time there appears a hard, sharp, snow topped mountain ridge, the next moment it disappears again. Pampa. But extremely cool!
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