Schlagwort-Archive: backpacking

Argentina, World Trip 2018-19

San Martin de los Andes & Bariloche

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Time for yet another boarder crossing! From Pucón, we took a bus to San Martín de los Andes, a small town in the Argentinian lake district. The boarder crossing is in a spectacular setting, very close to Lanín volcano.

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We arrived mid-afternoon and were greeted by our very friendly host from yet another AirBnB. While we first wanted to watch the football game of Boca Juniors vs River Plate, as this got cancelled he drove us up to a nice viewpoint over the village and lake. I especially liked all the yellow bushes blooming everywhere! We also went for a little walk around town, to the beach and back.

 

Next day, the sightseeing tour with our host continued – first going up Cerro Chapelco mostly by car and the last part by foot. The landscape with all its mountains and lakes reminds me a little bit of the Salzkammergut region in Austria, where I grew up.

 

Later, we stopped at some more viewpoints, ate the most delicious empanadas and chilled a bit at a lake. All in all, we had a good time in San Martín, even though it wasn’t really spectacular. From here, we bussed it further to Bariloche.

 

In Bariloche (and surroundings) we spent a couple of very active days! Plus, we still had lots of shopping to do for our upcoming adventures such as a blanket for Mathijs etc. On our first day, we thought we’d take it easy…well, it wasn’t that easy in the end! First we took a bus to Cerro Campanario and hiked up there, which only took about 30 min. I think this is one of the best value-for-the-effort hikes I have ever done! Why? 30 min and you get this view:

 

Awesome, right!? Since it was rather short though, we went to Cerro Otto afterwards and decided to climb up by ourselves too – instead of the expensive cable car. Ouuuffff! We ended up on a very steep, sandy and slippery path – for the most part also completely unprotected from the sun. It was an exhausting climb and the view not as good as on Cerro Campanario before. Oh well, higher effort, lower value! Haha.

We did decide to hike further to Piedra de Hasburgo though – luckily, because it was a rather easy walk and we found a very nice lunch spot and some different views in the other direction.

 

But… we still had to get down afterwards! There was no way we would hike down the slippery trail from before, so luckily we found a different route that was a bit better. Maps.me, once again our savior!

On our second day, we took the bus a bit further and rented some mountain bikes to cycle a roughly 30 km circuit that is called Circuito Chico. 30km does not sound like much, but the road was barely flat, mostly up and down, up and down… Ouufff! Not easy for me, but the views were very nice and fortunately we had good bikes this time (compared to San Pedro de Atacama…).

 

After about a third of the circuit, we took a detour to climb Cerro Llao Llao – yes, we actually climbed a small mountain in addition to cycling 30 km…probably explains how broken I felt in the evening… But it was very well worth it!! The views were different to the other mountains we had climbed and it was actually very nice!

 

We then continued our cycle past some pretty viewpoints and little beaches where we had our lunch. Towards the end, we decided to stop by the Patagonia Brewery, which was a really good decision! Even if you don’t like beer, the location and views are just amazing!!

 

In the evening, I already felt a bit broken….and that was before we embarked on our 3 day hike in Nahuel Huapi national park next morning! Oops. Maybe we should have taken a rest day in between. We had some heavy hiking bags this time with all our camping gear and food for 3 days! Luckily, the first day was rather easy: We took a bus to Villa Catedral and within 3 h we were at Refugio Frey, our stay for the night. It was a rather easy hike (minus all the weight we were carrying), with some nice views along the way.

At the Refugio, weather turned grey and windy unfortunately, so we had a tough time setting up our tent on very rocky grounds and cooking our first time on the new gas stove we had bought in Pucón. It was simply freezing!! But the views were amazing even with the clouds and we hiked up a little hill to get warm and see it all from above. Not too bad!

After a night during which we more froze than slept, we woke up to a beautiful clear sky next morning. It is an amazing location to be camping at (for free), even though our whole body froze during cooking breakfast and washing up with ice water. Brrrrr…

What followed should be one of the toughest hiking days I have yet experienced. Our plan was to hike from Refugio Frey to Refugio San Martin (Laguna Jakob) which the local tourist/ trekking information in Bariloche had recommended to us. At the end of the day I felt like calling them up and saying something like: How DARE you recommend this hike to normal tourists and not warn them about the dangers!? But let me start from the beginning… when we discovered that the first part of our hike would be on frozen, slippery snow fields. No, we did not have crampons or walking sticks. Oh well, 2 wooden sticks we had found along the way LUCKILY. Honestly, we should have called it a day right then, turned around and hiked back down the same way we came from the other day. But something inside us was pushing us both – did we really carry all that luggage up for something that could have been done as a day trip? Was it not going to get better after the snow/ice fields? After all, this was the trek we got recommended to do. Whatever the exact reason was, we decided to go for it and push on. Up the steep snow field, I was relieved no-one of us had slipped and slided down into the half-frozen lakes.

I guess we were euphoric that we made it and were hoping that the hardest part would be behind us. So we decided to keep going instead of taking a different route down via Cerro Catedral. It was a very tough and slippery decent – basically mostly bigger loose rocks on loose sand. In the end, it was only shitty rocks anymore. I named it the shittiest decent ever. Little did I know that there should be another decent like this following, later during our day.

For a short while at least, we followed a rather easy and flat trail through the forest. Until we came to a river crossing where Mathijs flooded one of his shoes and I just decided to wade through the ice cold water barefoot. Brrrrr! It really was the day of challenges for us.

After the easy part, the trail went uphill again and we soon stood in front of a snow field again – only this time the snow was soft from the sunshine during the day and we sometimes sank in really deep. It felt safer in a way than the frozen snow from the morning, but it was tough to get up the steep mountain like this! In addition, the whole hill looked like a prime spot for avalanches to me – there were snow walls that looked as if they were gonna break off any moment and traces from previous avalanches that must have gone down just days before. I was basically shitting my pants climbing up as fast as possible, at the same time putting as little weight as possible on one spot at a time…(no photos because we were kind of distracted)

One might ask why we didn’t turn around at this stage. May I remind you of the shittiest decent ever? Which took about 2 h and would take even longer when having to go up? And once at the top we would have to follow the trail up Cerro Catedral and down on the other side… where we had no idea about potential snow fields or other challenges either? So I guess we were at a point of no return, where the only way to make things better was to keep going. We made it!! Well, obviously, or I would not be telling the story. We found some foot steps that were headed up a less dangerous looking section of the hill and slowly, cautiously made our way up. From the top, the views were amazing in both directions and we could already see Refugio San Martin at Laguna Jakob. Yay!

So close…but yet so far. What lay between us and our camping for the night was the shittiest decent ever, no. 2. It took forever on loose dirt and rocks and we were completely exhausted when we finally, finally arrived at the refuge. The night was freezing again and in the morning we woke up to frost on our tent! Brrrr…

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We still had quite a walk downhill in front of us, but it was rather easy after what we had done the day before. However, at this stage we were both really tired from already 4 very active days, with no. 5 now following. The decent was rather uneventful, until we took a shortcut to get us to a closer bus stop in the end… and suddenly stood in front of a broad river without any bridge! Going back wasn’t really an option, so we scouted the shallowest, narrowest part of the river section, took off our shoes and waded through the ice cold water! Brrrr… I think I have never been cold so much so many times in a row, as during this 3 day hike.

Overall, it was worth it – but we certainly wouldn’t have done the crossing between Frey and Jakob if we knew of the dangers ahead of us. And it’s a hike I would definitely never do again! Needless to say, we were more than happy to spend the next day mainly sitting on the bus to Puerto Varas…

Chile, World Trip 2018-19

Pucón – in the shadow of the volcano

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Time for a long bus ride again! After all our relaxing time in Viña del Mar, we were ready for a change in scenery and hopped on a night bus down to Pucón where our Couchsurfing host picked us up at the bus station. We had not slept much that night and the weather was grey and windy, so we got some organizational stuff done, checked out some camping gear (still need to buy a stove etc) and then dropped into bed! (the photo below is from a sunnier day in Pucon)

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Well rested, we were ready for a hike. The sun was shining again and we were looking forward to see Huerquehue national park. It was a 1 h ride on the bus and we realized that we had to hike quite fast in order to make the 14.10 bus back to the city. The bus times are a bit stupid: You arrive at 9.45 to then go on a 5 h hike whereas there’s a bus at 14.10 and the next one only at 17.10. Annoying. Anyways, we decided to give it a go and try to make the 14.10 bus to still have some more time to buy outdoor equipment in the city. So we power-hiked through the forest, through the mud and up many steps. Up, up, up we went. Luckily, the trail wasn’t that interesting until the first two viewpoints – which were super pretty with volcano Villarica being the star of all photos.

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Later on, the path straightened out mostly and we reached the three lakes: Lago Chico, Lago el Toro and Lago Verde. The first two were very pretty and we took so many pictures! Especially Lago el Toro was very picturesque with a snowy mountain in the back. We should have stayed here for lunch, a perfect spot and quiet, since most people went to Laguna Verde first…

…which was also pretty but not as much as Lago el Toro and there were very few spots to sit and have lunch. By that time, we had decided against the 14.10 bus and instead decided to walk a bit around the lakes and enjoy the scenery a bit more, rather than feel rushed the whole day. So after some time in the sun and lots more photos here and there, we hiked back – which actually took longer than expected! So in the end I guess the 14.10 bus would have been unrealistic anyways and we were glad we had decided for the later bus option.

Next day – next national park! This time we were off with all our luggage to Santuario El Cañi – a private reserve which offers camping. We had to stay at the reception camping which was not nice and didn’t have any facilities except a basic and dirty toilet and cold shower. If we had less luggage, we would have preferred one of the campsites higher up the mountain.

So after setting up our tent, we started the hike with our day bags only – which was good, because the trail went up very steeply for quite a while. I enjoyed the hike much more than the day before though: We were in no rush to make some bus at the end of the day, there were much less other people and Mathijs found me a good walking stick. Also, we got a really nice map from the park with little stations, descriptions, time estimates etc. It made the walk as a whole really enjoyable because instead of thinking about the whole trail, we went from one station to the next – some with some nice views over the area. Later, the trail flattened out a bit and we reached a couple of pretty lakes where we took our lunch break when we found a good spot. Learned from the day before!

Re-energized, we made our way up the last steep climb to the mirador. So far, we had missed the WOW factor about this hike… well, once we reached the top not anymore! We were treated with an amazing view in all directions, lakes to our feet and snow-capped volcanoes on the horizon. A total of four volcanoes can be spotted from up here, of which Villarica and Lanin are the most picturesque ones. What added to the views were the cool araucania trees growing everywhere – some of the strangest looking trees I’ve ever seen.

We thoroughly enjoyed the views and then slowly made our way down the mountain, taking our time not to arrive too early at the campsite where there was not much left to do other than have picnic dinner and fight over our food with numerous cats and dogs. Camping life!

Chile, World Trip 2018-19

Colourful Valparaíso & down-time in Viña del Mar

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After all the wine and mountain views around Mendoza, we hopped across the boarder again to Chile. Well, hopped sounds quick – but it took the whole day. In Valparaíso, we were staying at a basic and not too nice (but central) AirBnB which made it easy to explore the hilly town over the next 1.5 days.

Valparaíso is kind of an artist town that spreads out across various hills. From the hills, there are nice views over town and the ocean. It felt really good to be back at the ocean after spending so much time inland recently!

What Valparaíso is really famous for though, are all the colourful graffiti that are covering houses and sometimes whole streets. They are the main sight of the city and beautiful! You can clearly see the difference between some talented and not so talented artists. I really enjoyed walking around on the hunt for more street art to photograph. Sometimes, we also took some of the old escalators up to viewpoints, saving on energy and walking time – plus, it’s kind of a must do experience to be in at least one of these old escalators once.

We had talked about taking a bit of a break from travelling for a while already and spontaneously decided that now was a good time. There was no nice apartment left on AirBnB in Valparaíso unfortunately, but we kind of also liked Viña del Mar when driving through by bus, so booked ourselves a little place there. The next three days, we didn’t leave the apartment all that much, but chilled a lot, got some things organized and ate some good food. When you’re traveling for a longer time, sometimes you need a little downtime like this!