Chile and Argentina in 20 days

*There is a gap in the blog as I haven't yet written about the 3,5 weeks that we spent in New Zealand. That story will be written, some time.*

Santiago and surrounds with Cissi and Nacho.



We got on the flight from Auckland at 4 pm and arrived the same day in Santiago de Chile at 2 pm. The time difference is 16 hrs and we were pretty wrecked when we arrived at Cissi's and Nacho's place in the city. Cissi was in the middle of the concluding bits of her final essay for Uni and still she made us a nice lunch when we came. We decided not to sleep during the day so that the jetlag would be conquered. That evening we got a second wind and sat up until 2 am drinking wine with Cissi and Nacho. They told us the wonderful news that they had gotten engaged!

The day after was friday 21 of May and it was public holiday. Nacho and Cissi had organized an apartment for the weekend in Viña del Mar, with ocean view from the balcony. Viña is a town on the beach just 2 hrs from Santiago, in the summer time it is full of tourists. When we visited there were many people because of the weekend but it was still very relaxed.

We drove there in Nacho's new car. This weekend in Viña Nacho and Cissi showed us their favorite restaurants and we ate lots of delicious seafood soups and fish and drank nice wine and Piscola, pisco con cola.

We visited Val Paraiso. It is a town that is connected to Viña del Mar but is a older part. It is built on many different mounts going down toward the ocean. It has many old, charming and shabby, colorful houses. It is also one of the biggest ports in Chile. I went to see the house of the famous chilean poet Pablo Neruda. It was really cool. He died some years ago and now he has a few houses in Chile that have become museums. He collected many beautiful things and decorated his house wildly, it also had the best view over the town.

According to Nacho all Chileans want to be poets. I think I know what he means, there is a love for the bohemic and cultural in Chile.

We spent some days after the weekend just in Santiago. We relaxed in Cissis apartment and tried to help her with some small things for her essay.

Santiago was pretty nice. We walked up to the cerro san christobal and had a look at the view over the city, with the andes in the background. It is not all days in Santiago you can get a good view. Since it is in a valley the smog gets trapped and leaves the sky gray. Since many people left the city in the weekend there was less smog the days after. The city was full of universities and schools, just an observation we made. Cissi told us that most people go to Uni since when you have an education you earn much more money, something important in Chile where the salaries are low and prices are not so low.

We hade timed it well with our visit, just two days after we left Santiago Cissi would fly to Sweden. We also had the chance to catch up with Mikey, Aaran's australian friend who came back to Santiago from australia just two days before we left.



Puerto Varas and Chiloé



After a week in Santiago we took the night bus to Puerto Varas in the south of Chile, 12 hrs. They call it the gateway to Patagonia. It is in the lake district of Chile, a really beautiful area with lakes mountains and volcanoes. We wanted to visit some placfe in the south and Cissi and Nacho hade been there and recomended it. The day we arrived was clear and sunny. We stayed in a little hospedaje in town. An old lady owned the place. We were almost the only guests, there was no central heating, but we had our sleeping bags and blankets and slept well anyway. We have no alarm clock so we asked the old lady to wake us up every morning when we needed to go some place.

Puerto Varas is a small town on the lake Llanquihe, on the oposit side of the lake there are two volcanoes. One is a perfect cone shape with snow on the top, the volcan Osorno. The day we arrived in Puerto Varas there was an incredible sunset over the lake with the sky orange and pink around the volcanoes the full moon rose behind them.



We left our bags with the lady and took some day packs with us to the island of Chiloé. It is a pretty big island outside the coast of Puerto Mont, not so far from Puerto Varas. The island is famous for its wildlife, some tiomes of the year big colonies of penguins stay there. We didn't see them, wrong time. It is also famous for its strange wooden houses and colorful wooden churches. There are some of the only remaining wooden houses on stilts in Chile. The island wasn't spectacular, the wether was pretty bad, very gray. But we found a nice little hospedaje with an open fire where we relaxed. We also got a guided tour of one of many forts of Chiloé by a selfrenowned guide, who we suspect is a local alcoholic trying to earn a couple of pesos. He told us about the time when Chiloé was a part of spain, 13 years after Chile got independence. Both England and Chile tried to take the island, but finally Chile got it.
After one night on the island we went back to Puerto Varas.

We had booked a trip on the lake Todos los santos. It was a full day tour, first a bus trip to the lake then 4 hours on the boat, back and forth on the lake. The views from the lake were spectacular. There are 4 volcanoes and lots of mountains surrounding the lake. It was pretty cold so we only stepped out on the deck to take some nice pics.

Argentina

From Puerto Varas to Bariloche in Argentina was only 6 hrs on a bus. It was nice when we drove over the andes to Argentina. As we arrived to Bariloche we saw the city on the lake with the great Cathedral mountains in the background, it was beautiful. At the bus terminal we took on the offer of a guy promoting a small hostel. It turned out to be a house owned by a very nice Argentine family who rented out rooms mainly to guest workers from northern argentina. The family lived in the same house and was very helpful. The sister in law mended my jeans without any cost and they gave us a lift to and from the bus terminal. One nights we sat up drinking wine with the father in the family. He was a veteran of war, the Maldivo war (the falklan islands). It was a disastrous war for Argentina as they were beaten by the English in a month time. He told us the story of the war and showed us pictures of him in a uniform.

Bariloche is not as small as you would think when you arrive there. There are about 80.000 people in the city. It is mainly based on tourism. In the winter time people come for the ski, in the summer for the lake and hiking the mountains. We came in the autumn and there wasn't that many tourists. It was a bit rainy, on the werge of snowing.

We took the local bus around and went to Cerro Campanario. From the top of the mountain you can see the view of many small lakes and mountains. We started to walk a bit along the road toward the next village, but we got followed by some wild dogs and decided to jump on the next bus instead.

We also visited the Cathedral mountain. We did a day hike up to a refuge on the top and down again. In the valley the weather was ok, sunny and just drizzling a bit, but at the top there was a snow storm! We didn't see the peaks up the top for all snow.

We stayed for 3 days in Bariloche, a bit short, but we knew that we wanted some time in Buenos Aires before we flew to Peru.
From Bariloche to Buenos Aires it is about 2 hrs flight or 23 hrs on a bus. The prices for the flights were double for us as for the Argentinians. Tourist discrimination. We took the bus. The entire trip was over the great pampas. It was flat and dry without any trees. The bus ride was ok though. The overnight buses here are almost as an airplane. They have a steward handing out snacks and food, givning you a blanket and a pillow. They show really bad films dubbed in spanish but the seats recline alot and I haven't got much trouble sleeping.

Buenos Aires

Back to the place where Aaran and I met for about 4 years ago. We stayed with Aaran's friend Santi who's from the city. He had a nice apartment with a spare bedroom in Palermo, one of the most central parts of the city. The night we arrived Santi, who is a lawyer during the day, was performing in a play. We went to see it and we liked it. I understood a bit more than Aaran did, but none of us understood all of it. Afterwards we went to have some dinner with him and his actor friends. Getting back to the B.A. habit of having dinner no earlier than 11pm.

The day after was saturday, Santi's brother was playing Rugby just outside the city. Aaran, I and an other friends went with him to see the game. It was sunny and nice to be outside, but I didn't care to much about watching the game. After the game we went to Santi's girlfriends house. She is a professional actor. She lives with her father near to where the Rugby was. In the garden they had a big bbq, parilla. We had bought some meat and wine and Santi showed us how to make a parilla.
Another friend of Santi came for the bbq. The three argentinians, Aaran and I had a great dinner. At midnight it was Aaran's birthday and we all sang for him and Lucia gave him a dessert with a candle. Santi, Lucia and Here are all very talented in music. For a couple of hours after the dinner they were singing and playing for us. Later Santi took us to a house party a few blocks away where we danced a bit and drank some more.
The day after was sunday and early afternoon we made our way to the market in San Telmo.
In both Bariloche and BA we had problems withdrawing money from the ATM. It just wouldn't work, the machine told us that the card was not valid. After a few frustrating days of trying all the atms in all the different banks around town we put 1 and 1 together and discovered that the problem was only in the weekend. Hapiness was when monday morning the machine actually handed us money!
During the days in BA we did some sightseeing, went back to some places where we had been last time and saw some new ones. Every night there was an event with Santi. We had dinner at his parents house in the middle of the city one night and at an arty restaurant where his friend was playing the guitarr another night.
When we left Buenos Aires we were exhausted! We had a really great time.