Down Chile and through Bariloche, Argentina

Santiago, Chile - After another bush camp on the Argentina-Chile border and a 2 hr border crossing we got into Santiago, the capital of Chile where we stayed in a hotel in the middle of town. We spent a couple of days catching up on sleep and walking around town. Santiago is a very Americanised city. This was where we also lost 5 passengers and gained another 10: 6 English, 1 South African, 1 Scot, 1 Aussie trainee driver, 1 Argentinean.

Pucon, Chile - With half a new truck we headed south to Pucon along the 4-lane highway over a couple of days to get to our New Years spot early enough to set up camp, then get on with the partying. We camped at Pucon in the Chilean lake district with 8 other overland trucks and got on the booze early in the afternoon. After mingling around we all headed to the main beach on one of the lakes and watched the fireworks display at midnight. 10 minutes before the display, the heavens opened up and we got saturated but lucky for us our Argentinean passenger, Irina, sweet-talked some locals into letting us squish under their umbrella. After a 20 minute display a group of 5 of us headed into town to a nightclub and partied hard with the locals for 3 hours.



The next day was a recovery day with lazing on the beach and not doing much at all. The day after we decided to climb the local active volcano, Villaricca. Along with about 200 other tourists we completed a 4 hour climb through snow to the crater at the top. We couldn’t see all the way into the crater but we could hear it and every now and then we saw magma get thrown up high enough for us to see it. After a lot of photo taking and lunch it was time for the fun bit of sliding down the mountain on our butts. The pants we were given had reinforced backsides especially for sliding down the mountain. We slid in stages pretty much from the top to the bottom car park and even though we had sore and cold bums it was really fun. The next few days we chilled out and went to hot pools.



Bariloche, Argentina - We crossed the border again into Argentina and went through some really beautiful mountain scenery. We camped a couple of kilometres out of town and spent the time strolling the tourist town. I booked a paragliding flight for one day but due to a miscommunication I missed out on doing it so spent more time wandering town and eating free chocolate samples from all the chocolate shops.



Navimag ferry, Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales, Chile - Back to Chile again so we could catch the four day ferry through the Chilean fjords. Travelling to Puerto Montt from the border was very similar to New Zealand with dairy farms everywhere on gently rolling, green countryside and mountains in the background. We saw off the truck at Puerto Montt because there was no room on the ferry so Skank had to drive it down through Argentina. After a delayed start, due to South America time (like Island time), we got under way and started heading south through the fjords. Luckily the sun decided to come out as we set sail after our first morning of bad weather for over 4 weeks. As we watched the sunset from the bow on a pretty calm sea we saw 4 dolphins swim underneath the boat which was pretty special.



The second day’s weather wasn’t too flash, being overcast and very windy but the scenery was beautiful and we saw some seals. At about 5pm we had to leave the fjords for the open ocean for 8 hours. The seas were very choppy and half the passengers including me got sea sick so I spent the rest of the day asleep until we got back into the fjords the next morning. Day 3 didn‘t bring good weather but at least the seas were calm. We had a stop at Puerto Eden where most passengers got off to touch land again and in the afternoon we went sailed up to a glacier that came to the sea. We then had a few drinking games which got a bit raucous and we basically became the most hated on the boat because of the noise we made. The night’s entertainment was a couple of rounds of Bingo before we hit the sack. On the final day we didn’t get to Puerto Natales until late in the afternoon and it took several hours to dock while they waited for the weather to calm down. We rejoined Mo and headed north to Torres Del Paine National Park.

Torres Del Paine, Chile - Into Chile’s most famous National Park and we had to wear thermals all the time which was a weird thing for me to do in December. We spent 3 days camping in the park and on the first day we trekked up to the famous towers only to find they were surrounded by mist and it started to snow. The next 2 days were clear but windy and we relaxed and went for a horse trek around the park. We saw numerous Patagonian animals including foxes, guanacos (another relative of the llama), rheas (like small ostriches) and a couple of skunks.