Climbing the Villarrica Volcano

Leaving Argentina and crossing back into Chile, our first stop was the city of Pucón. As we could quickly figure out, the place was a major tourist destination - manly for this guy, the city's number one attraction:

The Villarrica volcano, one of only five volcanoes worldwide known to have an active lava lake within its crater (thanks again, Wikipedia). 

Virtually every tour operator in downtown Pucón offered a "volcano tour", meaning a climb all the way up the crater.

So we signed up for the climb with Politor, one of the local tour operators, and up we went!  

Well, it wasn't that easy, actually. First, we had to show up at their office at 6:30 in the morning - and learned that the tour actually got postponed to the next day due to bad weather. Ok, back to bed.

The next day, weather conditions were great and we could get started in a group of about 20 people plus several guides.

They first drove us to a base where we had the chance to use a chairlift for the first few hundred meters of elevation. With several hours of hiking still in front of us, everyone gladly accepted.

Oh, by the way - this is what's left of the previous chairlift, which got destroyed during the last major eruption in 1971.  -->

But of course there is absolutely no risk of another volcano eruption today! Absolutely none! Don't panic! :-)









After climbing up to approximately 2100 meters elevation, the interesting part began: hiking on the glacier.












Getting closer and closer ... only 2 more hours to go...

... and finally on the top at 2800 m, after about 4.5 hours of hiking!















That crater was pretty impressive! Every few minutes or so, a small eruption would happen and you could see (and feel!) the volcano spitting up some lava.

Really awesome!

I didn't manage to capture the lava outbursts on camera. But I swear they were there! :-)

Going down was a lot easier. They had these tracks carved into the snow where you could just - literally - slide down on your butt!











Really an amazing hike, although we had to pay for it with several days of muscle soreness.

For the reminder of our time in Pucón, we took it easy: watching a free concert of Chilean funk band Papanegro...

... hanging out at the "beach" (note the black sand - and guess where it's coming from)...













... and enjoying the "local" food scene. :-)












Finally, we got on a bus for another overnight ride to our second to last destination in South America - the city of Valparaíso. Stay tuned!

Bariloche - or: Argentina's Switzerland

The 1840 km (1150 miles) trip
from El Calafate to Bariloche

Our last stop in Argentina was the city of San Carlos de Bariloche, or just Bariloche. We were faced with two options how to get to there from El Calafate: either a short two-hour flight, or a much less expensive but 29 hours long bus trip.

Needless to say, we chose the latter. :-)
So, with all our electronic entertainment devices (Kindle, iPod, Laptop) fully charged, we boarded a bus on an early Wednesday afternoon, spent the night on a sort of comfortable "cama" ("bed") seat, and arrived at the Bariloche bus terminal on Thursday evening.









With the nearby mountains already resembling Switzerland, the city of Bariloche has decided a while ago to go all the way and make its downtown district look like a Swiss mountain village.

(Long before Leavenworth, Washington came up with a similar idea...)

The city's main square....

... with a view of the Lago Nahuel Huapí.

















Staying at the cozy Periko's Hostel for a couple of days, we spent a lot of time exploring the nearby mountains and lakes.

A view of Bariloche from Cerro Otto, west of the city center.

... where they also had some fancy artwork.
























And - just like in Switzerland - there is the other attraction Bariloche is famous for: food! In particular, chocolate ...

... more chocolate...

... and even beer with chocolate (cerveza con chocolate) - no kidding!

A clear violation of the Reinheitsgebot, you would probably get chocolated and feathered for doing something like this in Germany.

Oh, and of course: cheese fondue! Ranzenpflege!














Finally, an unexpected highlight happened on our last day when we ran into Bariloche's carneval parade.

Today we also learned: somewhere on this planet, they manufacture fake butts.















Hours of fun! :-)











On to our next stop: Pucon, Chile! More in our next blog post...

El Calafate and Perito Moreno Glacier

Crossing back from Chile into Argentina, we took the bus to El Calafate, a popular tourist destination and gateway to Los Glaciares National Park.



By far the most famous place to see is the Perito Moreno Glacier, a 250 km² (97 sq mi) ice formation and the world's third largest reserve of fresh water (and of course we remember these facts from our Spanish-speaking tour guide and totally didn't look it up on Wikipedia).








So that's where we headed the day after our arrival, despite the chilly weather. First we went on board of a boat to get close to the "ice front"....

This was already pretty cool (yes, also literally). In particular, every couple of minutes or so, a large block of ice would separate from the big mass and drop into the water. Imagine a large building collapsing right in front of you and you get the idea.

They even offer tours to go hiking on the ice. Yes, the small dots on the left are actually people. -->

Having just hiked in the mountains, we passed on that one though.









The really awesome part was to see the glacier from the many observation decks they've build.













You can walk around there for hours and see the ice from many different angles.

A view from the top platform. Lots of tourists there, of course. As usual, every other tourist group was from Germany...

And yes, we made the obvious joke and asked whether they would serve a Vodka on ice in the nearby restaurant. Just to find out that, in fact, they did offer alcoholic drinks with glacier ice there - for a hefty surcharge...

Well other than that, there wasn't really much to do in El Calafate other than seeing more glaciers such as one called "Upsala". But we decided that we've seen enough ice for now.

Instead, we took it easy just went for a few walks along Largo Argentino, spotted a few flamingos...






... and spent a lot of quality time hanging out at a local coffee place. Or in German: Rumhängen! :-)


And preparing(*) ourselves for the upcoming 30 hour bus ride to our next destination: Bariloche, almost 2000km north of El Calafate. We'll tell you in our next blog post how that went.




(*) preparing = Max downloading TV shows such as "The Bachelor", "Two and a half men", "Revenge" from iTunes.  

Torres del Paine

Another prime spot to visit in South America was Torres del Paine National Park in Chile. With nearby Puerto Natales as our home base, we first started our exploration on a one-day bus trip.










Despite the rainy and very windy weather conditions, we got our first taste of the natural beauty - incredible mountains, glaciers, lakes, and the occasional waterfalls.

In case you were wondering, the wild fires that raged in the park over the last few weeks have all been put out, but many areas will take years to recover and smell like a grill party gone bad.

On the very windy beach of the Gray Lake.
Note the icebergs in the lake, coming from the nearby glacier.

The winds and constant pelting rain meant we had to be bundled up in warm clothes and rain gear for most of the day.

So, that was fun... However, the more exciting part of our visit was a three day hiking trip with overnight stays in the park.

Since neither of us are experienced hikers, we started with an easy hike from our first night's refugio. A refugio is a simple hostel in the mountains, most of which are only accessible by foot or horse.

The weather turned out to be a lot nicer than the day before. This was one of the many lakes in Torres Del Paine, about a one-hour hike away from our base.

After this warm-up, we were ready for the real challenge waiting for us the next day:
hiking all the way to the top for a view of the eponymous "torres", the famous three rocks which look like towers. Sylvia was really dreading this part!

We took off early in the morning, trying to beat the rush (it's the most popular hiking route in the park and gets a bit crowded later in the mornings). The entire hike can be broken into three parts, the first of which is the "Refugio Chileno".  At an elevation of around 400m and about 4km distance from our starting point, it took about 2 hours to hike there. Alas, that was just the beginning....

We left our backpack at the refugio and only took necessary provisions with us for the remaining hike. The first hour is a relaxing walk through forest. From then on it's a boulder-infested, steep incline. Towards the end you end up half-walking, half-crawling over rocks and boulders to the top ledge. Finally, after 4.5 hours in total, we arrived at the top! We were very ecstatic and a bit exhausted.

Not sure if the pictures give enough credit to the place - the view from up there is simply stunning!

If you ever come to Chile, make sure to include this hike in your itinerary. It's worth it!

"Torres del Paine" literally means "Blue Towers", by the way. Not surprisingly, the three "towers" are called South, Central, and North.

Note the waterfalls on the left side of the cliffs - those alone were pretty spectacular, but hard to capture in a picture.

Well, after enjoying the view and taking about 100 pictures we finally had to walk back. And partially climb over rocks (although not as large ones as the one in the pictures).

After a total hiking time of about 8.5 hours we made it back to the Refugio Chileno. Sylvia looks very happy and elated, doesn't she? :)

There we got to warm up, recover from the hike, and enjoy a nice warm dinner. A 5-course dinner at a gourmet restaurant could not have tasted better!

The next morning we only had to walk back to our "base camp", mostly downhill. Piece of cake, after making it to the top!

In case you were wondering how they're getting food and supplies to the refugios in the mountains: this should answer the question. :-)

Nearly back at the starting point!

We have many more pictures to share from this trip, but this should do it for now. Really an awesome trip, one of the highlights of our entire journey so far!

A final view of the Torres del Paine National Park before we head back across the border to Argentina for new adventures...