A Place to Stay

Having crossed from Chiloé to Chilean Patagonia, I really start to feel removed more and more from "civilisation". This area is called the "Carreterra Austral": Small towns with wooden houses amidst huge wilderness, rough roads and sporadic public transport. Well, there are worse places to get stuck for a day or two. I did the wildest white water river rafting ever on the Rio Futaleufú (try saying that a few times) and visited the temperate rainforest of Parque Pumalin yesterday where I was introduced to a 3000 year old "Alerce" tree ... no you don´t have to guess the words :-)

I am staying in an interesting place now in Chaitén: a hexagonal house built by a German origami wizard. He apparently made his fortune folding animals out of paper and decided to spend it all in Chile. Great place, and he´s an excellent guitar player too.

I have lost count of the places I stayed in the last months. Most of them were nothing special; not good, not bad, just a place to dump your stuff and sleep at night. Some of them were pretty bad; unfriendly people, noisy, dirty, crappy beds. Sometimes you take a room, sometimes a dormitory bed for some snoring fun, and if you want to enjoy some of the nature you will find yourself waking up in a tent now and then. You might get a breakfast (in varying quality and quantities...), or you can use the kitchen. I like it if there is a common room, where you can sit and chat, read a book or watch TV a bit.

But there are places that just feel right. They might be beautiful, have a welcoming atmosphere, conveniently located, relaxing, the owner might play beautiful guitar music (already had that twice) and if you´re lucky you meet really good people ... or fluffy puppies :-D

Where is Señor Hans ?

Well, I wondered that myself, so I spent my "waiting for the ferry day" to create a little map (for Chilean Internet cafe prices ... grrmmblll).

Have a look (click on the map picture and then select "original size" at the top):

http://esnips.com/web/WhereIsSenorHans

This continent is HUGE ! Couldn´t someone tell me this before I started this whole mess ?

Chiloé - Impressions

Yup, this was Señor Hans´s most interesting conversation in 4 months ...
(guess the words !)

Vamos a la Playa (O Wohohoho)

Now I didn´t want to put that stupid song inside your head of course :-D But it is done now ...

Señor Hans has just returned from his first solo-carry-everything-else trekking on the Mysterious Island of Chiloé, which is a wooden-house-on-stilts kind of place. I expected to be trekking through the forests of the national park on the pacific coast of the island, but fate had something different in store.

I was all ready, having left some stuff in a hotel down the road, with my camping gear and food for three days when I presented myself to the park entrance ...

"No, we only have short routes through the park. And we don´t have a map. Follow the main road for z%d# km (I couldn´t understand the woman here) for the beach and Cole Cole".

"Ew ?"

What the heck, I´ll just go and see. And she didn´t ask me for any money. So I went, and saw (amongst others):
* Amazing sandy beaches
* A stray penguin, being harrassed by a Chilean family
* Falcons fighting in mid-air
* Annoyingly buzzing horseflies
* Mysterious rock labyrinths
* Cows swimming in the ocean - well almost
* Enormous strands of seaweed
* Lagunas and foresty hills
* Local tough-looking people on horseback (going a tad bit faster than I)
* Seagulls dropping clams from the sky
* Mists coming from the sea

I was walking with close to 15 kilos on my back, which is a different kind of trekking (in Peru, most of the stuff was carried by donkeys), but I have to get used to it anyway if I want to do the grand Torres del Paine trekking-of-trekkings later on (that one is 7 days or so).
I needed to remain close to fresh water though, because all the food I was carrying was of the powdery variety (including milk, hoho !!), but that was no problem. There was a little river/laguna running the length of the beach with the rocks, hills and forests of the park on the other side. It looked surreal, especially when the mists got blown in from the ocean.

The first night I found myself a secluded spot in sheltered dune area along the seemingly endless beach line, with views of the setting sun. The second day I happened upon my own private little bay, where I studied the extremely entertaining behaviour of the local bird life, together with the works of humanity´s finest minds - our friends, the ancient Greek philosophers - and where I chanced a dip into the ocean ... bbbbrrrfrreeezingly cold !!!

I never reached the fabled Cole Cole, I guess it was where some of the other trekkers were heading (so I was glad I didn´t go there), but I did get mighty sore legs. Let´s see how I fare on my next solo trip. I guess I will do one just a bit longer before I do that Torres-thingy ...

Pucón - Impressions

Fun del Agua

Don´t get your hopes up ! Contrary to the previous picture, Señor Hans is smiling heaps in his new destination, the small resort town of Pucon in the Chilean lake district. It is an amazing area, and the Chileans thinks so too - it´s packed here (for Chilean standards). And some of them are even smiling.

It feels a bit like a cross of the Ardennes, Sweden and Alaska: the lakes, rivers, houses, the rolling hills, the rustic atmosphere ... and then there is this huge perfectly coned, snow-covered volcano looming in the background all teh time (I´m climbing it tomorrow).

I already had the perfect day here. I met agents Maartje and Sander again and we went mountainbiking to the "Ojos de Caburgua", a series of waterfalls and pools of crystal clear icy cold water ... where we went swimming ! And jumping into the waterfalls, diving from the rocks and generally behaving like 10 year olds again :-D

A bit further on was the Lago de Caburgua, which supposedly has a white sand beach. We couldn´t see any white sand, just the black volcanic sands that is the norm here and then some brown-coloured beach like we have in Holland. Of course that ended up being the "white peculiarity of nature" ... funny people, the Chileans. It didn´t deter us from having a crispy cool, much-needed, dive into the lake.

If that wasn´t enough water fun, we rounded off the day with an evening visit to the hot springs. Gazing at the stars from the soothing hot volcanic waters ... and then there was the wild water rafting trip (class 4 and 5) yesterday.

And today ... is relax day, or perhaps playing around a bit with the puppies at the hostel ... Oh yes, Señor Hans is smiling :-)

Valparaíso y Santiago - Impressions

Valparaíso

Santiago

And as a bonus, Señor Hans with super-aerodynamic powers ...

Smile Please

Although aching for the vast emptiness of Patagonia, I had to taste a bit of the city life in Chile. From Mendoza in Argentina I went straight to Valparaíso on the coast to stay for a bit. I´m writing this now from Chile´s capital, Santiago.

When I arrived in Valparaíso, it felt more than a bit like home. Walking to the hostal, I took one of the many 100 year old "ascensores" up the hill and looked down... I saw the sea again ! And the seagulls flying around the harbour area where multi-coloured stacks of containers where waiting to be loaded onto the freighters. Behind me two street performers were playing something. I could swear it was
"Ketelbinkie"...

Valparaíso (number one on the coolest town names list) counts a few hundred thousands souls spread over the many "cerros" (hills) of the city and the small strip separating the heights from the unforgiving sea. The cerros are dotted with a century old houses of any colour imaginable, most of them a bit on the scruffy side. My hostel was on Cerro Allegre, the happy hill, which felt like a bohemian version of San Francisco. There were mirador walkways, old cast-iron elevators - the ascensores - to get up and down quickly for a few coins and friendly street dogs lying around.


The hostal I was in, Luna Sonrisa, was small and welcoming, with fruity breakfasts, a cold fridge to cool my milk, and the best beds I slept in for 4 months. Just perfect. There was much rejoicing with the others in the hostal, a ragtag gang of Europeans to wander around with, taste a sample of the nightlife and study the interesting mating behaviours of the street dogs. As an added bonus, the hostal owner happens to be the guy who writes the Footprint Chile guidebook, so there was also much interrogating about southern Chile (he actually talks like a guidebook as well).


Santiago is very different. Six million people strong, it seems to be a model capital city: efficient, sterile and a bit boring. For me the biggest attraction was riding the metro :-). It made me think of a rich version of Lima, with suburbs in stead of shanty towns.

So what about Chile ? I have been told, it is the richest and most capitalist country of South America , and it looks like it as well. You can see it in the cars, houses, department stores and I certainly feel it in my wallet. It´s almost twice as expensive as Argentina here. But the people ... people, please try to smile a bit ! After two weeks in Argentina it almost feels like I walked into a funeral. They are correct and polite though; it´s the first country here where cars actually stop for pedestrians (being the total opposite of granny-scooping Peru). They even weigh the bread and if you ask for a short haircut, you really do get a short haircut. But a bit of happiness seems hard to find. Maybe it all trickled down south. I´ll let you know ;-)