Glacier Perrito Moreno.

Yes we survived the 27 hours of bus from bariloche to Rio Gallegos...and we even did better taking a connection to El Calafate combining a total of 31 hours yeah! Buses are nice and even if the landscape is monotonous for 2000km (only desert, no trees, no mountains, a few sheeps) the trip pases pretty fast.
El Calafate is on the slope of the Southern part of the Andean moutains, and is not as charming as Bariloche but has some similiraties. From there we went to visit the most famous natural attraction of Argentina, the immense glacier of Perrito Moreno.
We rented a car and headed toward the park arriving there by 5pm when all the tourist tour bus were going back. On our way to the look out point every turn of the road was releasing a little more of this magnificient landscape. We stared in front of this impressive mass of ice extending from the horizon and ending in the water of the light green lake for the next 5 hours, seeing 4 huge pieces crushing into the water and listening to the continous groawling ice. We then camped in this same park quite illegaly but it was fun and the next day we could go and appreciate this natural beauty for another few hours at sunrise.
In the afternoon we gave the car back and we started our hitchhiking adventure. yay! i´ll continue later because now i have to visit Buenos Aires, a little hungover. yay! cheers! (here I come again after almost a month). So yes we wanted to hictchhikke but being successless we renounced and took the bus to Puerto Natales...back to Chile.

Ya estamos el 10 de Noviembre!!

This message will have to sum a bit of all what happened in basically one month since last time I actualized my blog!

Let's get started....Around the 18th of October we went to discover this colorfull city of Valparaiso!

Being Chile's most important port it is a quite big city but keeps a certain charm, thanks to its varied colored houses and wall streets, and its famous lifts that takes you up the hills on which the city was built! From there we went to Viña del mar where monica has other relatives.

A few days later after relaxing in what had become our new house in Valparaiso we took off passing by santiago to Mendoza. Our first time in Argentina, consisted in rediscovering the pleasure of laid back south european life with plenty of good wines, friendly people and excellent food! We enjoyed biking in the vineyards and hanged around the nice city of Mendoza.

After this nice Argentinian parenthesis, we came back on the Chilean roads heading always more south! That's how we arrived in Puerto Montt, a quite hugly city being the stereotype of a fisherman town on an english coast (very rainy, a bit messy, with nothing special to see beside the sea and fishermen)! From this starting point the idea was to rent a car and go for a 10 days circuit first in the lake region, a bit north of Puerto Montt, than going down to the famous and remoted Island of Chiloe to finally drive on the isolated Carretera Austral. We respected this plan taking it easy and enjoying the easiness of travelling with a car! We went to Pucon, visited lot's of national parks, climbed the volcanoe de Villarica (2800m) and wild camp in the rain!

After this nice travelling in between lakes and volcanoes in the middle of cows and swiss german alike villages we went to discover this rainy Island of Chiloe. It is considered as one of the most remote place in the world with some very assimilated indegenous fishemen communities. Landscape are very different from what we had passed by and made us think of Irelands. We went of a fisherman boat to observe some endengered species of pinguins on a rainy day of course...it rains around 200 days a year...yes it is very green! =) We enjoyed beeing in a caban drying our clothes and campings tents for a few days in the northern city of the island, Ancud.

After those days a bit enclosed on this Island the plan as cited previously was to explore the carretera austral with our toyota pickup. Unfortunatly, we discovered in our disorganization that crossing from Chiloe to the carretera Austral was out of reach of our financial possibilities. Instead we passed back by Puerto Montt and headed till the very beginning of the carretera Austral until arriving to the ferries where we headed back.

After maybe too many days in this region of Chile, we finally left this long stretching country for the immensity of Argentina. Our freedom and excitement of travelling suddenly came back...Argentinian patagonia incredibly immense and beautifull! Today we are leaving Bariloche by bus that we'll take us 27 hours later to Puerto Gallegos in the last bit of earth before Tierra del Fuego and Ushuiaia!