After my last post I got seriously busy, meaning too much fun and no blogging for a while.Then, end of July I flew back to Europe, meaning way too much people to see, festivals to go to and no blogging for a while.

But I still want to finish my travel blog, so here goes!

The day after we climbed Huayna Potosi (remember, the 6k mountain we managed to get ourselves on top of) me and Khanh, my travel bud, woke up at about 7AM which is not exactly one of our many good habits and this being an understatement…

Loud noise in the streets of La Paz. Once again we found ourselves in the middle of a Bolivian party, el Gran Poder. Tons of people, street parades all day long, starting at 6 AM and going on ‘till 3AM. Even though we could barely move our legs anymore, we spent all day walking, eating street food, and looking at the parades. I actually got pulled into the parade at one point in time to go dancing. One thing about the street food. Most people will horrify by the thought of eating meat on the street in Bolivia, especially given the cleanness of your average Bolivian toilet. But please, people, do not miss out on all these goodies! Street food is Bolivian culture. Between the two of us, Khanh and I probably tried out most of it and never felt better!

El Gran Poder, officially being a religious holiday, it’s celebrated with lots of impressive dancing, live music, amazing outfits and even more amazing amounts of beer in a well orchestrated mix-up of Bolivian craziness.

In La Paz, I took another interesting local bus (in Bolivia all local buses are interesting, yet very probably crappy) to get to Coroico. I spent one week in La Senda Verde (the green trail) volunteering in an animal refugee, main tasks being feeding, cleaning and playing with the animals. Lots and lots of fun. An amazing opportunity to work with wild animals, in an amazing setting, with very nice people, the volunteers being gringos, the staff being locals (funny locals, that is) not to least to mention the thrill of not having to pack my stuff for an entire week. Vicky and Marcelo, a Bolivian couple, did an incredible job. They started in Coroico building their dream house and some guest houses in a valley. One day a monkey that had been saved from a market kinda ended up at the lodge and that’s when it started. Now they have about

15 capuchin monkeys,

6 spider monkeys, a howl monkey,

a squirrel monkey,

loooots of parrots

and other birdlike species. Meet the Spice Girls. Five of them, always together and extremely dumb.

a macaw,

two koati’s (similar to a racoon),

an Andean beer (called Aroma, mi favorite). While one of us would clean his cage, we'd keep him busy feeding him peanuts. My kind of task, amazing how Aroma would gently take a peanut from your hand and break it open with his paws. Way too cute! I had to forge myself to take a good look at his claws every now and then to keep me from petting.

a few owls,

two boa constrictors,

some tortoises

and a bunch of rabbits and guinea pigs.

The capuchin monkeys are probably the funniest habitants of la Senda Verde.

Amazing how humanlike they can be sometimes.

Martin for example would help you cleaning his eating platform. If you wouldn’t give him a brush he’d simply steal yours. Which basically applies for most of them. They’d steal literally everything they could get their little hands on.

One of them was very keen on undoing shoe laces; another would button down your shirt but would be nice enough to button it up again as well. Most of the babies would crawl down your shirt, looking for some “human” warmth. We ‘d recognize Kimbo because he’d always force your lips open with his fingers after which he’d just jam his hand in your mouth. Believe me, better no to think about where those little fingers could have been during the day. He actually managed once to kinda suck my lips for some time. Hesitating to pull him off (those cuties do have very sharp teeth), I couldn’t help but wonder if I was getting French kissed by a monkey now??

The tree house I slept in for a week!

Look at one little bastard slipping down my shirt!

I would have loved to have been able to stay longer in the lodge. I was getting rid of my flees for free and I had a great relationship with the staff, once again very happy with my Spanish, and the other volunteers and as the week passed by I got to know the animals a lot better. But still a way to go to Buenos Aires and little time to get there…

In Sucre, I met Khanh again. Lots of contradicting opinions on what Bolivia’s capital is. Some say Sucre, some say La Paz. Let's see what my friend google has to say... The official capital of Bolivia is Sucre; La Paz is the administrative capital and seat of government. Well, seems they kinda have two capitals...

Exactly 200 years ago, the "First scream for freedom" , a first wave of protest against the Spanish in Latin-America occurred in Sucre. Kicking some Spanish butt, independence was declared in 1825.

Sucre is a beautiful colonial city, very different from hectic La Paz. The market was simply amazing and our favorite feeding place (restaurant wouldn’t do it justice). City with a very nice and vivid atmosphere, less crazy yet more livable as La Paz.

Our daily breakfast!

We did a few days hike, the tourist office recommended us to go with a guide but we kinda figured we’d be able to go solo, asking people we’d meet on the way where to go to. The lack of people on the way and the lack of knowledge of Spanish of those few we did meet, made it an interesting few days but we managed to go and see what we planned to go and see. A nice way to see life in some very remote villages, only reachable by foot.

The 3 hour bus ride back to Sucre was not exactly a bus and got nominated for most dusty ride ever! The truck left almost empty, but on the way we picked up people traveling with the strangest things, going from 3 month old babies to huge amounts of wood and a few big empty oil barrels. And two gringos of course, this still being the funniest item on board according to the locals.

Bring in the wood!

After Sucre we visited Potosi, famous for one of the biggest silver mines in Latin-America. A fine example of wise and human colonization… (please spot my irony). Visiting the mines while the miners are at work is not a nice experience, you’ll feel ashamed for being Western and an extremely spoilt tourist, but it is very interesting and handing the miners some coca leaves and soda as gifts might buy of your guilt slightly. During Spanish colonization, the Indians were forced to stay months down in the mines, working in extreme hard and dangerous conditions. The Catholic Spanish initially didn’t feel very much for the Bolivian tradition of coca leaves and prohibited the use. Noticing chewing coca leaves actually helped the miners work harder and more insane hours, God suddenly realized coca leaves weren’t as bad as initially thought and coca was introduced again.

Nowadays, most of the mine is in foreign instead of Bolivian hands and work conditions are still amazing… No control exists on age of miners or work hours. Miners work on commission so every kilo of mineral counts, whether this is extracted by dad or his 12 year old son. Inside the mines it’s extremely hot. Potosi being at 4090 meters above sea level, there’s not a lot of oxygen in the air, let alone down the mines. I felt like fainting several times, once again ashamed as miners passed us by, wearing no helmets or protective clothing, pushing a 2000 kilo cart with their only source of strength in 8 hours being coca leaves and 96% alcohol (not a joke). Potosi itself looks like quite a rich town and it probably is. But regular people are probably among the poorest and less educated in the country.

The miners worship this guy. They leave coca leaves, alcohol and cigarettes.

96% alcohol...And I've seen them drinking it. (and tried some, mixed with water)

From Potosi we bussed to Uyuni for one of the highlights of my trip. Salar de Uyuni, one of the world’s largest salt flats and probably the most impressing one, the size being half of Belgium. The views are amongst the most amazing I have ever seen. Mountains can be impressive and overwhelming but in the end you’ll always have an idea of what a mountain should look like and most probably you've seen them before. Well, kilometers of white salt flats are not amongst your daily holiday views and we were thrown away by it.

Finding a tour company is not exactly a hard task, there are 52 different ones. Finding a decent and reliable one is a different story. Lonely Planet simply refuses to recommend one as none of them would be 100% reliable and a good one today might turn extremely shitty in a month. Not a big fan of the LP anyways, so I did my research online. Reading some horrifying stories (jeeps constantly breaking down, grumpy guides with 0 level of English, lousy food if present at all) we simply picked one that we couldn’t find anything too negative about and it all turned out fine.

Cold though. We passed the second night at -15 degrees in a hut with no heating. Thank god I brought whiskey...

To Bolivia

Finally leaving cusco (with the second biggest party of my trip so far), we bussed to Puno, by Lago Titicaca. Supposedly the highest navegable lake in the world, but I guess that could be just a big fat lie as well! Anyway, with 3800 meters it´s high enough to make this kid lose her breath. Strikes and roadblocks have been messing Peru´s normally amazingly reliable transport system, so we had to leave Cusco early to get to Puno at 3 AM. Dodgy hostels all over so no real problems. The day after we left for las islas flotantes, the floating islands. The floating islands are made out of reef and are truly amazing. It´s a bit of a tourist attraction but it didn´t really bother us as the people on these islands are just so funny.

Besides, we decided to spend a night on one of these islands which for some reason nobody seems to do. Well, the cold temperatures might be a reason but nothing that 10 heavy blankets won´t solve! It´s an experience sleeping on nothing but reed, including cabaña and beds. In the morning one of the islanders gave us a rowing boat to go and explore. Traditional boat, including the very heavy paddles which meant crappy rowing, getting nowhere and having all the islanders make fun of us.

From Puno we crossed the border to Bolivia. Funny story! I got my passport stamped, saying 90 dias, very nice as it should be! My fellow traveler, a Canadian, got a stamp saying 30 dias... I asked for some explanation, but the only decent thing we got from them was something about no authorisation to give 90 days (bullshit offcourse, if ayone will have authorisation it´s border police and I just got 90 days) and the fact that they were thirsty and wanted a coke. Well, there´s a shop next door, I said and so it became clear they wanted us to bribe them. Not even a decent bribe like 100 dollars, no, with a COKE! We couldn´t help laughing and a clear ¨look, we know he is entitled to get 90 days¨ actually solved the case without us buying any soda´s. Without any further issues we got to the city of Copacabana, leading to a weeklong Barry Manilow tribute from our side (remember? copa-copacabaaana, the hottest club north of havana). Things started well in Bolivia as on the day we arrived it was mother´s day in Copacabana and the way they celebrate has nothing to do with children singing songs and bringing breakfast to bed. No, it was a big street party involving lots of very cheap beers and the women were the most drunk as this was their holiday.

The next day we took the boat to Isla del Sol. Unlike most people (once again, no idea what makes all travelers do exactly the same things) we walked from the south part to the northern part of the island. When we got there, we found a beatiful beach, filled with people in traditional outfits and dressed up with masks and other ¨stuff¨ (don´t really know how to describe). Some questioning learned us it was ascension day (hemelvaartsdag). Well, I´d go Catholic again if we would celebrate as they do! A live band, literally all villagers drunk and dancing and talking to us without making any sense.
Very interesting evening except for the fact we couldn´t get any dinner as all restaurant owners were, correct, drinking. In the morning we found the band on the beach again, washing up their instruments in the lake after which the whole thing started over again.

We took the boat back to Copacabana and from there to La Paz. There are no words to describe La Paz. It´s insane and I loved it from the very start. You can probably buy everything on the street in La Paz, there are simply no supermarkets. There is a witches market that sells baby lamas to offer to Pacha Mama (mother earth). Street food is amazing. We forgot about all you-re-not-supposed-to-eat-meat-on-the-street warnings since everything looked so good. Most travelers complain about Bolivian food but between the salteñas, choripanes, good soups, trout by the lake and tons of vegetarian and gringo restaurants, I think I could easily survive a very long time. Even though the locals do stick to fried chicken with rice and french fries on a daily basis.

We hung out for a few days and the took a bus to Rurrenabaque. Well, this is an adventure-bus. It´s supposed to take 18 hours. Our bus left La Paz 2.5 hours late since there was so much cargo to put on the roof, including a kid´s bike, 5 old wooden chairs and tons and tons of clothes. After a few hours, the bus broke down a first time and this would happen a few more times along the way. We sat in the back, on the last row, jsut behind us a very cute kid that couldn´t stop pulling my hair or crumbling cupcakes all over us. It took us 24 hours to get to Rurrenabaque in which I probably slept 30 minutes. Pavement doesn´t exist and the road is more then bumpy. The road is one of the world´s most dangerous, leaving almost but not quite enough room for 2 cars to pass by. Since we were delayed we were doing everything in the dark, the driver manoeuvring us on the side of a cliff to let others pass by. Let´s say we were very glad we survived. What´s in Rurrenabaque? Well, a hell lot of alligators, that is. And piranhas, looots of big big birds, pink dolphins, the cutest monkeys qnd most awful spiders... Bolivia is the Botswana of South-America!

We were hoping to fly back to La Paz but rain interfered. Airport was closed for 5 days so we took our chances, some valium (an over-the-counter-drug in Bolivia) and another bus.

Back in La Paz I decided that 4000 meters of altitude was not realy an achievement so I climbed a 6088 meter high mountain. Quite an achievement for someone who runs out of breath on the hostel´s stairs in La Paz. Three days: first day: How do i climb an ice wall in 1 lesson. First night: waking up with the most terrible headache ever and having to pie outside when it´s freezing. Second day: few hour slowest hike ever up to 5200 meters. Second night: pretend to be sleepy at 6 AM while someone is trying to brak our of your head with a hammer. third day: wake up at 1 AM and start walking up in ice and snow at -15 degrees. Every little step is 10 times as hard at this heighth and climbing ice walls in the dark is as hard as it sounds. When sun came up we could al of a sudden see the top and I realized we might be able to make it! And so we did, even though the last part was about the scariest thing I ever did. Not even enough room to put both feet besides one another which makes the "don´t look down" of my guide kinda ridiculous.
ice climbing and yes, that´s me!

don´t be fooled! it looks just like an edge but itùs actually a path
me at 6088!

Peru

In Iquique, Ruben and I said our goodbyes. He wanted to go to Bolivia while my head was turning towards Peru. Time to move on on my own again. It´s nice to have a travel buddy, but I noticed more funny unexpected stuff happens when you are alone. Saving quite some money, I minibussed myself over the border from where I took a night bus. Even though I was only 5 kms out of Chile, the differences were already huge. In chile and argentina, you go look for a bus, in Peru, the busses come to you! One foot inside the terminal and 5 company bus proppers surround you, all shouting their destinations and prices in your ear and promising they will leave within 5 minutes. Prices were a relief after Chile and Argentina and you can actually still bargain them. I randomly picked one of the girls that seemed nicest to me.

Now, this was a local bus, me being the only gringa on it. When I got on, I noticed the huge amount of bags (turkenzakken, that is) all the locals had piled up in the bus aisle, by their feet and literally everywhere. The woman next to me was actually wearing more clothes than what I´m traveling with! A quick, kinda anxious, ´Is it safe to put my luggage in the bus trunk?´ caused some laughter and a reassuring ´claro que si´! Somewhere in the middle of the night we were pulled over and my neighbour told me to get out of the bus to go look for my pack which I could no longer find in the trunk. Apparently customs pulled us over and they were checking all luggage. Seeing my innocent face, they handed me my stuff over immediately. Back to the bus, I saw huge amounts of clothes being thrown out of all windows. My loud and clear ¨Que???´ caused some more laughter and learnt me that secondhand clothes smuggling from Chile to Peru is common business. Back on the bus, i couldn´t really see the difference in amount of bags in the aisle, but we did leave a huge mess of clothes on the side of the road as we took off. Nobody is as smart as me, smiled the 100 clothes layered woman to me, blickering all her golden teeth, a fashion feature I´d see a lot in the coming weeks.

Anyways, we all got safe to Arequipa, my first stop in Peru. Lovely city, very beautiful, nice hostel. Good enough to make me spend a week there in which I visited the Colca Canyon. This is under discussion but this canyon is supposed to be the deepest in the world. It´s beatiful but honestly not what I imagined from a canyon (grand canyon images). It has a cool lookout point for condors, though. I suspect the locals from feeding the birdies since there were so many but that didn´t spoil the pleasure. We got there at sunset and I was still sleepy so no cool pictures, sorry. We hiked a few days down the canyon (valley, whatever) and spent the night in a tiny village with a local family.

In Arequipa, I also spent the worst 2 days of my travel, trying to change my United Airlines flight and spending literally hours on the phone, shouting to them. I even had the UA call operator hanging up on me with a sweet ¨thank you for calling United Airlines¨. Problem was some crap of me not having an Argentinean visa and them not believing that I wasn´t even in Argentina. Anyways, after 2 stressfull days, a nice lady from connections managed to convince them I´d have no visa-issues and they changed my flight to 20th of July.

From Arequipa, I once again took a local nightbus (gee, Peru WAS going to be cheap compared to Chile and Argentina) to Ica where I took a taxi to Huacachina. Huacachina is an oasis, no other way to describe it. Surrounded by sand dunes, a small tourist village around a lagoon. Main attraction of the village being sandboarding and lying by the pool. (Yes, hostels with pool!) . To go sandboarding, we requested ´the craziest driver´and got him. They drive you with a sand buggy over the sand dunes and give you a candle to wax up your sandboard. The sandboarding was great, great, great fun even though I just went down on my belly (but reallllly fast!!).

backpacking in style!

Huacachina being a dangerous place to lose lots of time, I forced myself to not do this and made it up to Paracas, by the ocean. From Paracas I visited las Islas Ballestas, also known as the ´poor men´s galapagos´. Well, I guess the lack of turtles and tropical coloured fish actually do make it the POOR men´s galapagos but tons of dolphins, pinguins and sea lions and above all disgustingly amounts of birds still make it a cool place. It is one of the world´s largest producers of fertilizer, meaning that every few months people go on the islands to scrape off the bird poo.

Although I didn t initially plan on going I did take a flight over the Nazca lines. A fellow traveler mentioned a theory that it is better to regret having done something then to regret not having done something. The flight was bumpy yet fun, even though the puking girl behind me wouldn´t agree. And the lines remain to be one of the world´s largest archeological mysteries.

In Paracas I met some travelers who told me a spooky story on their local night bus crashing as it only had 1 driver and the dude fell asleep. They were fine but people did die in the accident with kinda gave me a wake-up call on those cheap buses so I took a better one to Cusco. From now on checking amount of drivers and if contents of thermos is coffee whether pisco.

Cusco is place hard to describe. On one hand it is annoyingly touristy. It´s impossibe to walk over the main square without getting at least 5 offers for hand massages, inca trails or cocaine. But once you wander a bit off, you´ll notice this city has a soul. Cusco has lots of street food, an amazing central market next to which locals come dancing on the street at night, lots of alpaca clothing markets and lots of dodgy clothes markets. Lots of travelers stay around for weeks, just to party hard with fellow travelers, being it sunday, wednesday or friday. But you can party and meet locals as well. Personally, I had a great time, I think I was able to find a balance between all these things.

Ofcourse, people come to Cusco for one main reason. I visited ´the thing´ as well, but I refused to pay 450 dollars to book a hiking tour 3 months in advance, so I just kinda bussed through the sacred valley towards Aguas Calientes. Last part of this trip is a 2 hour train ride for the ´reasonable´ price of 31 US dollars (love that they even bother giving this prices in dollars i.o. local currencies). Adding the high entrance fee and tons of oher tourists.............. it is still absolutely amazing. We hiked up very early in the morning to be able to climb Wayna Picchu (the mountain you see in the background of all MP pictures) Only 400 people a day can climb this mountain and they go up in 2 shifts, giving us still a kinda priviliged view over the site. The tourist flocks only enter the site after 9, 10 AM anyway. I heard from a Peruvian guy there was a way to avoid the expensive train ride, resulting in us walking over a train track for some hours and bussing/taxi´ing over, ehm, ´interesting´ roads, including a stone avalanche and us running through it (and the driver shouting from the other side that we had to run faster)

This is still really early and there were almost no people on site yet

But they found their way...

Walking back over the railway

Besides MP, I got invited to a free canopy tour by some people from an agency who passed by the hostel. They were just starting this tour and wanted to make a promotional video. Backpackers hearing the F-word, we all massively joined in. A day of free mountain bike, some canopy and a thrilling rappel. The tour agency is called Omega and the video is supposed to be on youtube.

To conclude I went on an absolutely amazing 3 day rafting trip. Class 4-5 rapids, camping on the side of the river, hot temperatures compared to Cusco, campfires at night. It was one of the most fun things I´ve done so far, I enjoyed every minute of it! I have amazing pictures the agency took but I have them on a CD that is currently in my hostel. Will see to put some online next time!

The longer I travel, the more difficult it gets to keep on blogging. In between skype, mail and facebook, my blog is in terrible conditions. Adding that I realized I had already spent 2.5 months in Patagonia and that I needed to move my ass up north to keep it from freezing.I´ll telex you guys through my last months...

In Bariloche I met Ruben, one of my and together we went to mendoza for some decent wine-tasting We rented bikes from Mr Hugo and biked from bodega to bodega which was euhmm... interesting.

From Mendoza we traveled through the Andes, to Chile again. On the way we found a small village where apparently ¨7 years in Tibet¨ was shot! Looking for some decent Brad Pitt gossip we made a stop but the villagers just refer to him as ¨one of them¨. Our taxi driver figured as an extra in the movie.

We passed the Aconcagua, one of the world´s highest mountains. Two ways to Chile before us. The traditional one, through a tunnel, or a cooler one over a mountain pass. This sign (high mountain road, extreme precautions) makes most people go for the tunnel but we met some cool Argentineans who were willing to take us over the pass. They sure know how to complicate things in border crossings cause in the end this passing to Chile was my worst one so far, involving a forgotten package of coca leaves in my bag (ellenadaaaaa, Chile is stricter than the US) , no exit stamp from Argentina and an unfriendly Chilean customs officer. Barely escaped a 200 dollar fine but we made it to Valparaiso, hereby declared my favourite latin city so far. Amazing vibe, lots of coloured wall paintings, tons of beautiful bars and restaurants. Pablo Neruda loved it and so did we. At the same time, the city got the award for most kitchy public toilet.

From Valparaiso, we made a short stop in Vicuña. Chile has the world´s best skies for astronomy, so we went to visit one of the observatories.

From there we went on to San Pedro de Atacama, famous for its huuuge salt flat. The town wasn´t really my thing, way to touristy. It´s difficult to go visit the surroundings on your own, so we were kinda forced to go tour-wise! On the list of places to visit: The Tatio Geysers.
We weren´t blown away by them and the worst was that we needed to get up at 3 AM to sit in a bus for 3 hours to get to a place at over 4000 metres at -10 degrees. Adding the fact that I had left my only fleece sweater on a bus (otra ellenada) my lips just turned blue.
Next to check of our list were some lagunes in the salt flat. One of them has a salt level higher then the dead sea which ment some serious floating fun!
The last spot we visited was a lagoon covered in a salt crust where we could shoot some of the best pictures so far on

From San pEdro we bussed to Iquique, very North of Chile. I went surfing for a day only to discover that I still don´t have a lot of balance. No, I wasn´t as bas as I thought I´d be. But 1 day is not enough to learn. Besides, Iquique is one of the best places in the world to go parapenting. As you have a pilot who does everything for you, this was more my style, haha.

tunes and reading

Music I´ve been listening to:

1/Animal Collective with a special mentioning of singing My Girls out loud when hiking (or when in a supermarket for that matter). Doing all the voices by myself, bien sur! funny stuff!

2/Berlin Calling - Paul Kalkbrenner.- Aaah what can I say! MJ, you know what I mean.

3/I Tank U - T.Raumschmiere. Especially good when I´m on the verge of getting into a foul mood. Angry music makes me happy again, apparantly...

4/Hitsville U.S.A The Motown Singles. dank u Marco!

5/The Lost in Translation Soundtrack... The strange atmosphere both movie and soundtrack contain is so recognazible when you are traveling and wonder what the hell you´re actually doing in a bus terminal in the middle of the night.

6/Mota - Cultura Profetica. It´s Puerto Rican and it´s not reggaeton!

7/Musique Concrete -Calibre. When I´m hiking and need to speed up. (or whenever I need to speed up basically) Goldie has the same effect

8/Different Places - Plastic Operator for sunny, somehow melancholic moods

9/Hercules and Love Affair. Always, just in love with this album

10/Yo Majesty -Futuristically speaking Never be Afraid. Exactly for that reason in the title.Sometimes a girl on her own needs a kick in the ass.

And lots more, ofcourse,but it´ll get boring soon.

Books I´ve red and swapped:
1/On Chessil Beach -Ian Mc Ewan. Blew me away. Incredibly funny and sad at the same time.

2/The count of Monte Cristo. Trust me. a 1200 pager from 1840 is not a book you want to be traveling with but it was the only decent book I could get my hands on on that moment. Plus a classic that had been on my list for some time. People would dazzle and aks me with I in christ´s name i´d be reading. A profound ¨the bible¨was my standard answer.

3/Me talk pretty one day - David Sedaris. Great discovery! Just too funny!

4/Jesus weed. Don´t even bother, it´s even worse then the title predicts. It was a loan from a travel friend and kindly given back after 50 pages.

5/ Veronica decides to die - Paulo Coelho. I´m on it... Started very promising with the main character killing herself on page 1. An hour in the same bus terminal as where I am typing these lines and I´m already on page 64.

I ve never been so far behind on blogging, I´m afraid. Last post is on glaciers in the south and i´m now in the desert in the north of chile. Following post will be with lots of info, with lots of holes and with lots of spelling mistakes but try to enjoy it anyway!!

From El Chalten I went to Los Antiguos. Nothing too special to mention except for the fact the prefectura (the argentinean baywatch) offered me a ride on Lago Buenos Aires in a zodiac boat. A loud and clear ´claro que si´ from my side got me in a boat with some argentineans and 2 local david hasselhoffs. A bit showoffs as we went faaaaast but it was good fun. Lago Buenos Aires is the biggest lake in south-america after titicaca and at its deepest is 590 metres which ment lots and lots of waves, wiehieee!
I crossed the lake on the Chilean side on a very rough ferry ride. It took the ferry people several hours to decide if we´d cross or not due to the strong winds. I was glad we did cross but kinda changed my mind when I set foot on the other side, dripping wet.


This was my starting point for the carretera austral, an epic road going north. Epic as in very amazingly bad shape and with very few public transport but also very beatiful and hitchhiking is the national sport here.

First stop was Coyahique. I ran into 4 American girls who I had met a few times before already. The travel-world is even smaller then the real world. We went together to a rodeo which was amazingly funny. Drinkig beers, having some asado meat chatting to your friends and at the same time watch people getting kicked of a horse, I mean, what else do you need in life!




From Coyahique I made my way up north, with some stops in a few vilages. The last one being Chaiten. Now, this village has been struck by a few volcano eruptions over the last year while everyone thought the volcano was as dead as they get. Nobody got hurt and no lava reached the village bit it´s covered in ashes and a river now runs straght through it. The village is supposed to be closed but 70 people still live there and refuse to leave it... I just passed to take a ferry but I was impressed with this village that seemed to be covered in cement and with volcano right next to it, blowing white, red and black smoke...

This ferry took me to Chiloe, which is Chile´s largest island. I planned on staying a few days but ended up staying 9 days. One of those places I fell in love with. People are too friendly to be true, the biggest difference on high and low tides on the planet and they have the biggest and most amazing shell food on this planet, I think. An amazing time, we camped on a beautiful beach in a National Park.

Weather is ¨changeable´though. Meaning pitching your tent in the sand might sound like a good idea on a sunny warm windless evening but kinda looses its charm on a more then windy morning. Almost all the poles of my tent split. While I was preparing its funeral already, one of my fellw travelers miraculously fixed it up with ducktape and I´m still carrying the thing around as we speak. Plan was to dump it about a month ago, but I think i kinda got attached to it...
We has some fun days in the island´s capital which had, surprisingly anough, an amazing nightlife and we visited a few of the small islands. Think 100 inhabitants, 1 small grocery store, electricity from 7 till 10 PM.


From Chiloe I moved on to Bariloche, Argentina again. What did I come here for? Wel, apparantly they have one of the top 10 best panoramic views according to National Geographic. Another item I can tick of my list!
After a day or so, the weather turned very bad, making the hiking in the mountains plan a little less exciting then it was supposed to be. I was determined to do this one specific hike so I just waited in town for the weather to turn again. Luckily, Bariloche is also famous for its chocolate.
I did get to do my hike.
On my one though, no fanatic hikers in my hostels. Woosies I thought while I just went for it. And it was amazing. I got so high the condors were actually flying below me, giving me a dance just a few metres from me. The refugio I got to had the most amazing setting, in between 2 huge glaciers, each one at about 100 metres. Last part of the hike, I did in snow which was a funny sight as I was wearing shorts and went down till my knees.

Parque Nacional Los Glaciares

After the 7 day hike in Torres del Paine, we first had a huuuuge asado (the local answer to BBQ) and I took the day off, resting my feet. After that I got myself to el calafate. Yep, Argentina again, I just love collecting stamps in my passport and slow border crossings. The town itself is not that amazing (understatement, it s an ugly town), so I just stayed 1 night. The day after I went camping in lago Roca, one of Patagonias beautiful lakes. We did a hike up to Cerro de los Cristales, an bit of a climb which my feet once again didn´t agree with. Once on the top we were at least rewarded with an amazing view. Torres del Paine on 1 side, Fitz Roy (another mountain in argentina) and Perito Moreno, the famous glacier on the other side. Camping here was amazing (yet cold, tip of the day, fill up a bottle with hot water and put it in your sleeping bag, works like a microwave!).


The following day we visited Perito Moreno. This glacier is a huge tourist attraction, looks a bit like disneyglacierland but it is absolutely worth it as well. The cool thing about it (hehe, many cool things about a glacier bien sur) is that it almost touches a peninsula from where it is therefore possible to see the glacier from the front. Adding the fact that is one the few glaciers that is actually still growing instead of shrinking and that very regular huuuuuge pieces of ice fall of, causing an enormous sound ressembling thunder. Pretty impressive stuff, you find yourself standing in front of a huge wall of ice. It´s very difficult to judge how big the thing actually is, but the walls are about 60 metres high.

From El Calafate I moved on to El Chalten, capital nacional del trekking.

1991: 41 habitants

2001:371 habitants

2009: 600 habitants

The town was created in 1985 as a result of a border conflict with Chile. Argentina´s solution was basically populating the area with Argetineans. In 1994 the conflict was definitively solved when an international jury judged in favour of Argentina. As a result, el chalten is Argentina´s youngest town and it is placed in the middle of a National Park, making it a great starting point for trekking. The mountains surrounding it (Fitz Roy and Cerro Torres) are considered amongst the most difficult amongst rock climbers worldwide. The tops are not that high but the extreme weather and the perpendicular shape make it apparantly not your daily walk in the park.

El Chalten is a bit of a strange place, since only 600 people live there officially but many more come to work during summer and hostels are packed with hikers and climbers. I enjoyed it a lot. The hikes are amazing and I liked the mountain even better than the Torres of Torres del Paine Park. On the downside, one of the muscles on my left leg of which I didn´t even know the existance, got inflamed . A nagging pain that started in Torres del Paine and which I wisely (not!) ignored. The last few hours of a dayhike had been killing me, forcing me to decide to stay in town the day after. Luckily for me, the day after was a very rainy one, so lots of people held a ¨hostelday¨ and we chatted all day long with Marcelo, the hostel owner. The worst news about this all is that I could not cross to Chile the way I originally planned. My idea was crossing a lake by ferry, followed by a 22 km hike, across the border to another lake. I was afraid that I wasn´t really in shape to do such a hike in 1 day with my pack. Besides, it was practically impossible obtaining info on accomodation on the way, it was cold at night, rainy days followed sunny days, my fellow travelers were not up for it and I didn´t feel like camping in the middle of nowhere by myself. So I bailed out and bought a boring bus ticket. Yeah well. Anyway, amazing stuff happened again to me the days after, but next on that in a new post since this pc is not cooperating a lot...
Fitz Roy


El Chalten, 600 people town and they dare to put up a sign saying Chalten North and Chalten Centre! (i stayed in downtown)

El Chalten