Day 37 - Bigfoot strikes again

San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina) to Puerto Varas (Chile)          
Cabañas Bosque Sur 

A 7.30am bus this morning to cross the Argentina/Chile border for the third time - we don't think it will be the last, Chile is a long, narrow country and Patagonia straddles the border with Argentina, so in order to see all the best places you end up travelling back and forth. It was a lovely drive over the Andes, with great views of lakes, mountains and small resort towns. The farmland on the Chilean side definitely had an Aussie feel to it, not exactly sure why, perhaps it was look of the farmhouses, fences, and the occasional eucalyptus tree. At Puerto Montt we changed to a small local bus to take us to Puerto Varas, about 20km away on the shore of Lago Lanquihue.

After we arrived and settled in to our cabaña (which are found everywhere in Chile, they are essentially self contained cabins geared towards people holidaying with a car), we had a quick wander around town. It was a little cloudy, so from the jetty across the lake we couldn't see too much of the volcanoes in the distance, Osorno and Calbuco. Calbuco had last erupted less than a year ago, in April 2015.

There are two volcanoes under those clouds

First job of the afternoon was to rent a car for the next few days, the second was to buy K some shoes as the soles on her old pair had inexplicably disintegrated. The first part was easy, plenty of car rental places and reasonable rates. The second part though had some issues - in some shops the staff didn't seem too interested in selling shoes, the second was that most shops don't stock shoes any larger than a US 9. We finally managed to track down a size 10 pair, they seemed a little on the small side but as this was an emergency K bit the bullet and bought them .... fingers crossed!

Day 36 - Public transport finally mastered?

San Carlos de Bariloche

Today we finally managed to get to Cerro Castillo, known as the ski capital of South America. Waiting for the same bus as us was a fellow Australian from our Antarctic trip - an interesting but fairly common coincidence it seems.

From the ski town at the base of the mountain we caught a cable car then a chairlift as far as we could go, then wandered around and did some short walks from there. It was a great view from the top though the mountain up this high was mainly all rocks, it would have looked so amazing covered with snow.

No, we won't get sick of these views

For some reason the bus back to Bariloche didn't turn up as expected, so our hourly bus had turned into a two hourly one, making it a long afternoon as most of the ski town was closed - just a couple of shops and cafes. Just when we thought we had the public transport system sussed it made fools of us again!

Day 35 - Day Tripper, Sunday driver yeah!

San Carlos de Bariloche

In previous years Bariloche has broken the world's largest Easter egg on Easter Sunday morning but unfortunately this year they broke with tradition and changed it to sharing hot chocolate in the afternoon - not really the same. Overall Easter has been quite different from what we expected, for what we thought would be a strongly catholic community in South America it's all been about the chocolate!

Once again we spent most of the morning trying to work out the transport system, we misjudged the location of where we thought we should pick up the bus to Cerro Castillo, so after waiting in the wrong place for a while we gave up and decided to take the easy option of the tourist bus to Cerro Otto.

We took the cable car up to the top, and after a wander around admiring the views we indulged in some yummy cake and coffee in the revolving restaurant.

That evening there was a concert in the town square, and as our apartment is in such a great location and the weather was so good, we just opened the window in our apartment and enjoyed dinner to the strains of a Beatles cover band. They were followed by a teen group that seemed to send the local girls into a frenzy, after they'd finished we watched out the window as the girls chased their tiny minivan (not much of a limo) down the street.

Day 34 - Missed Obama by that much!

San Carlos de Bariloche

We have a really nice airbnb apartment for four nights, and so far this is is the best place we have stayed in. The location is great, just near near the town centre, and the apartment is modern and spacious.

San Carlos de Bariloche is the chocolate capital of Argentina, with chocolate shops everywhere. We're in town for the National Chocolate Festival, held here every Easter. Today's main event was making the world's largest chocolate bar in the main street. Thousands of people lined the street to watched while molten chocolate was poured on a long table, spread and sprinkled with nuts, then left to cool, with music, speeches, entertainment and of course an appearance by the Chocolate Queen! The bar was then broken into chunks and given away to the crowd .... M went back for seconds of course.

Anyone for chocolate?

We spent most of the afternoon stuffing around trying to figure out the public bus system. It was sort of like Myki, but with its own quirks, in this case we only needed one card for the two of us, but it was hard finding a place that sold the cards. Once we finally had a card we caught the bus along the lake, and got off at Puerto Panuelo. After a quick look around the port we walked up to the five star Llao Llao resort, we decided we deserved a drink while we admired the view.

Obama was here

After we returned the hotel we discovered that Obama had been at Llao Llao for the afternoon just two days before - lucky we didn't try to drop by that day, we are sure the security wouldn't have let us in.

Day 33 - Fancy meeting you here

El Calafate to San Carlos de Bariloche

Time to kill today, our flight isn't until 4.30pm but we had to check out at 10.30am. As today is Good Friday we weren't sure what we'd find, the opening hours of shops in both Argentina and Chile haven't exactly been tourist friendly so far, with dead Sundays and aimless tourists looking for something to do when the shops and cafes are closed. However as El Calafate is very much a tourist town (with prices to match) we we had nothing to worry about.

It was a beautiful day so we sat out the front of a cafe with a hot chocolate and alfajores,  The wifi wasn't too good, but at least the sun was out and we used the time to do some more trip planning for after Easter.

Our flight to San Carlos de Bariloche was uneventful, although we were surprised to see someone from the Antarctica cruise on the flight. We thought we had stopped running into people but this guy was sitting across the aisle from us!

We finished the day with the great steak meal at a restaurant nearby - the food was so good that we booked a table there again for our last night in Bariloche on Easter Monday.

Day 32 - Scotch on the rocks

Perito Moreno Glacier

Without a car the options for visiting local attractions can be limiting, and in our case the thing we wanted to do could only be done as part of a tour. We had booked a "mini-trek" on the Perito Moreno glacier, only provided by one company in El Calafate.

We met our bus at 9am and then had to endure the hotel drive around to pick up more people .... some of whom weren't even ready yet. It was a little frustrating, especially considering that some of the hotels were closer to the office than we had to walk to get the bus!

We had been a little unsure about whether we were really up for another glacier visit after Antarctica, but we're glad we decided to go through with it. In Antarctica we weren't allowed to get too close to the glaciers, but here we had a great view and in addition this one calves quite often, we saw many chunks of ice fall into to water with loud booms echoing off the glacier as the ice hit the water.

The morning activity was viewing the glacier from the platforms built nearby (it moves about two metres per day in the centre, 40cm at the edges, not that we could notice), having lunch, then following the coastal trail to meet the bus. The bus then took us to a jetty, where we boarded a boat that took us to the beginning of the glacier trek by the edge of the glacier.

The trek involved us getting fitted with crampons, a quick lesson on how to walk, legs apart, knees bent going down hills, then we were off.  The top of the glacier was dirty in parts, but we were able to fill up our water bottles at some flowing streams of melting glacier ice, and the water was as you'd expect - clear, fresh and cold. After about an hour and a half of walking over the amazing ice landscape, we were treated to some chocolate and a glass of scotch on freshly crushed glacier ice - a great way to end the trek!

Day 32 - Resting from what?

El Calafate

Today was really just a rest day, wandering around town and checking out the shops. El Calafate is pretty much a tourist town, so lots of chocolate shops, restaurants and "artesanias", which sell souvenir items of a local, crafty nature.

In the afternoon M went for a longer walk around town and by the edge the lake, and also up to the mirador located at one end of town.

Day 31 - Spending quality time at the border

Puerto Natales (Chile) to El Calafate (Argentina)

The bus station was swarming with trekkers when we rocked up arround 7:15am, many with what seem to be brand new hiking clothes and backpacks ready, to head to Torres del Paine. We've never seen so many people wearing North Face gear, and as it turns out the founder of North Face died in a kayaking accident in Southern Chile only last December. You can usually spot the Aussies - they're the ones wearing Kathmandu gear - including M!

Our bus trip today was north and back over the border to El Calafate in Argentina. The only way to get to the southernmost regions of Chile via land is via Argentina, as the Andes and the ice fields can't be crossed by normal means. This means border crossing are the norm, but they can be quite time consuming - today's entry into Argentina for our bus took at least an hour, there seemed to be just one guy on an old computer, looking up details over what was probably a slow network connection.

I saw this in El Calafate but I'm not sure what it represents, sorry.

We finally arrived in the tourist town of El Calafate, with the main drawcard being the Perito Merino glacier. We have planned for two full days here, and the weather forecast said the day after tomorrow was going to be the best day, As it turns out what we wanted to do here was booked out for tomorrow, so we think we've planned well .... we'll see!

Day 27 - Onto the mainland and into a new country

Ushuaia (Argentina) to Punta Arenas (Chile)

A very early start today to be at the bus station by 4:40 am. Thankfully it hadn't snowed (which we thought might have happened) so the walk was easy. It seemed strange that the bus hadn't shown, and just before 5am a large ute and a people mover arrived. We were told that the city borders had been closed due to a strike. We had seen the strikers in town every day before heading to Antarctica, occupying part of the main street, but hadn't realised that the situation had escalated. The two vehicles were there to shuttle the waiting passengers to the other side of the picket line a few kilometres away.

We made it onto the second of three trips, we were driven to just before the barricade, which was made of pallets and manned by strikers sitting around open fires. We then carried our luggage about 100 metres past the stranded trucks and cars to a waiting bus.

It took about an hour to move everyone onto the bus, so we finally started on our trip around 6am. The bus was incredible dirty, and basic, and without heating. When we reached Rio Grande we swapped into a slightly better bus, which then took us over the border into Chile. The route then took us to the ferry over the Straits of Magellan and onto the South American mainland. There was a shop on the ferry, for some reason all the locals queued up to buy hot dogs .... which explained the strange smell as we walked into the seating area on the ferry.

World's largest mobile hot dog stand

We finally arrived into Punta Arenas about 6pm, and caught a taxi to our airbnb accomodation.just outside the city centre.

Day 26 - Back on dry land

Ushuaia

This ship pulled in to the dock at Ushuaia early, so breakfast was on the ship while it cleared customs (looking for contraband penguins maybe?). We knew the trip was well and truly over when the view out the window at breakfast was a dock with trucks and cars, not rolling waves.

I was told my original caption for this was dumb, too bad, you've missed out on a real zinger!

It had snowed in Ushuaia overnight so the surrounding mountains looked a little different to when we had left, It was raining as we disembarked, so by the time we had made our way to our hotel near the centre of town, we were a little on the wet and cold side.

We spent the day wandering around town, drinking hot chocolate and catching up with the rest of the world via the internet, pretty much just filling in time until tomorrow where we had booked a 5am bus to start heading north.

Day 15 - Setting Sail

Ushuaia to the Drake Passage 

The kind man that owned the place we have been staying at drove us with our luggage to the tour operator's office at 11am, and as we were due to board our ship at 4pm we needed to fill in some time. We arrived at the office and asked about the waterproof gear we had been told would be provided for our trip, it was all a bit of a muddle with no one seeming to know anything and us being sent back and forth between different offices to get gloves and pants, but eventually it was all sorted.

Nearly everything in Ushuaia is closed on a Sunday, and also closed between 1pm and 4pm every other day. The town is always teeming with tourists (in their shiny new outdoor gear)  - people from the huge cruise ships that drop in, hikers, skiers and of course people waiting to go on their Antarctic ship.

We spent most of the day in coffee shops taking advantage of their Internet to try and plan the next steps after the cruise, but we didn't get too far as the Internet is so flaky. Eventually the time came to leave, so we loaded up all our luggage and wet weather gear and headed down to the port. The first stop was the obligatory luggage scan, but security down here is very different to what we are used to, I'm not sure there is even someone looking at the screens half the time. We then headed to the gangway where we were met with the friendly staff who took our luggage on board for us.

Our cabin - more comfortable than it looks

Our cabin was cute and we were surprised that we managed to unpack everything we needed for the trip into what looked like quite limited space. We were then called for the mandatory safety talk and at the end were told to go back to our cabins, dress warmly, put on our life jackets and meet at the outside muster area for an emergency drill. After that it was hilarious, no one including us could find our cabins again, there was much laughter as we continually passed the same people in the corridors and we were all still lost. After the muster we were given a look into the life boats, very squeezy, long rows of seats with seat belts, fully enclosed (with no toilet either).

If all goes well this won't be required

Dinner was lovely with table service and then at 9pm we were called to the boot room to be fitted out with our special gumboots for the landings.

At about midnight we entered the notorious Drake Passage, lots of people had lined up to meet with the doctor and were now wearing little sea sickness patches behind their ears. For us sleep was a little difficult, with some rolling and lots of creaking from the bed furniture.

Day 14 - Getting Ready

Ushuaia

We did walk around town a bit today but didn't do anything too exciting, most of the day was spent preparing for the cruise .... hat and gloves bought - check, sea sickness tablets - check, wine to smuggle on - check, washing done - check, bus tickets bought to leave after the cruise - check.

We think we are ready for 2 weeks without internet, it might be a bit of a challenge, but we might also end up being be too seasick to care. Apparently the Drake Passage can be incredibly rough, and the wind had picked up today. In town we met some Americans whose ship was meant to go around Cape Horn tonight but as it's too rough they were in port for the night.

First place we've ever been where Australia is to the north!

Day 13 - Tassie in Ushuaia

Ushuaia

Today we had to return our rental car so we headed into town to fill the car up at the one and only petrol station in the central town area. The queues were always very long when we went past so we were happy to see there wasn't anyone there - there was a reason of course, they were receiving petrol so not able to sell any! We finally lined up and this is when we worked out why the queues are so long, not only is it the only station in town but is manned by one man only, who not only fills your tank but also takes your payment - what a system!

We visited the naval/prison museum, which was originally based on a prison in Tasmania, which had sections on animals, Antarctica, and prisons of the world, amongst other things. After that we did a bit of pre-Antarctica clothes shopping, as we were worried we didn't quite have the right gear for Antarctica (or even Patagonia). We had read that the prices are not much different to home, which was pretty much correct based on what we saw.

Unrestored prision wing at the museum

It's interesting walking around town and seeing other tourists, Ushuaia has to be the only place (apart from Mt Buller's Bourke St on a Sunday afternoon) where everyone walks around in brand new outdoor gear, parkas, and winter outfits, not a faded, dirty well worn piece of clothing was to be seen amongst the throngs of tourists.

After spending up on new hats, gloves and polar fleeces, we headed home for another night of our own home cooked dinner - we are trying hard to be frugal and so far it seems to be working.

Day 12 - Fox on the run

Ushuaia

Desperate to enjoy the great weather we headed off to the Tierra del Fuego National Park. We dropped by the El FIn Del Mundo steam train and watched other tourists board the train, we had heard though that it wasn't worth the asking price of over US$50 for the trip, so didn't join them. We had our hire car anyway, which was costing us around $110 per day for a beaten up small car, it's a captive market down here

Not far into the park we picked up a female hitchhiker, its amazing how generous you feel when you are on holidays in a strange country. Our first stop was Ensenada Bay where we had our passports stamped with the End of the World/Ushuaia stamp, before picking up our hitchhiker again and driving to Puerto Arias. Here we took two beautiful walks and then drove on to  the Alakush cafe, where we checked out the interesting  exhibition regarding the indigenous people of the area. It is a very sad history and probably expressed quite well in the wording in one of the displays where the translation of the Spanish word to upset/annoy was that the natives were "pissed off"!

Get your passport stamps here

On the way out we saw a "rare"  Patagonian Culpeo Fox, that's what they say but it was waltzing around the middle of the road very tamely so not so sure about the rare bit.

Just another beautiful view

We headed back to town and checked in with the tour agency to see if our payment had made it through, the good news was that we had been upgraded on our cruise from a twin bed porthole to a twin bed window - not bad for a last minute booking!

As the weather for the past two days had been so incredible, with sun and beautiful blue skies, and the forecast for the next few days was cold and showery, we decided to push on and visit the Glacier Martial, it was about 5pm, but still a few hours of daylight left. Even though we have more days here in Ushuaia, we are cramming the park visits into two days because we are worried about the weather changing.

Nothing here is well signposted so we parked the car and set off up the steep hill, not knowing how far we had to go. After over an hour of steep uphill climbing we reached the "glacier" - really just a large patch of ice, Any secret ambitions that K has (had) to hike to Everest base camp have now been quashed!

Driving around Ushuaia is not too hard apart from the lack of signs indicating that you have turned into a one way street, on a few occasions we saw the oncoming traffic heading our way so we to frantically do a u-turn to avoid a head on.

Day 11 - El Fin Del Mundo

Ushuaia

We have five days until our cruise leaves, which is heaps of time in a small town like Ushuaia but the problem is that the weather is great at the moment but a change is coming, so we need to get moving and use the next couple of days for sightseeing before the weather changes on us. First order of business was to pay a deposit on the cruise, after which we rushed off to rent a car for the next two days to see the sights of Tierra del Fuego.

First trip is to the lakes area east of town, impossible to get lost as there's only one road in one road out - we are at El Fin Del Mundo (the end of the world) after all. We drove out of Ushuaia, up over the Andes via the Garibaldi Pass and down the other side. 

We eventually arrived at a small town of Tolhuin at the end of Lake Fagnano. The town itself didn't seem to offer much, so we kept driving through town to the lake's edge, and we ended up by chance at Hosteria Kaiken situated just on the shore of the lake. We sat in the restaurant while admiring the view and munching on empanadas, then went and sat outside for a while to enjoy the sun, before heading back into town.

Nice spot for lunch!

The towns around here seem to have a Swiss feel about them, not because of the landscape. more to do with the designs of the buildings, with the sloping A frame roofs for the snow and the wooden shuttered windows. 

Day 10 - Arrived at the End of the World

Buenos Aires to Ushuaia

An early start today for our four hour flight to Ushuaia, a noticeable difference to our other journeys on this trip was that everyone was carrying warm clothes and parkas - goodbye 30 degrees, hello 9.

We arrived into Ushuaia and were amazed and excited, now we feel like we are on a proper holiday, we are seeing things we truly have never seen before (sorry Punta del Este but we've seen beaches and resort towns before). Ushuaia has amazing mountains with snow still on them when it is summer, the clean crisp air of southern Tasmania and the feeling that only The End of the World can give you.

Ushuaia and Beagle Bay from near our apartment

We caught a taxi to our accommodation to find that no one was at home, after waiting for a while they arrived, they had been waiting at the airport for us, even though they didn't know which flight we were on. We do need to keep an eye out for that small town hospitality as we have been caught like that before.

We headed into town to explore on a glorious day, who said it was cold down here on the edge of the end of the world? We had a vague idea that we would like to take a cruise out to Antarctica but we had looked at the prices and they seemed a little steep, so our plan was to wait until we arrived here to see if we what was available. All the agencies were advertising last minute deals, we visited a few and walked into one to explain our situation. As it turns out, the agent was able to give us a price on one cruise in euro that was much better than the advertised $US price - in fact a saving of about US$1000 in total. It also left in a few days (meaning we just had to stay an extra night), it was twin share with a private bathroom, and was heading as far south as the polar circle. We went away to discuss over a coffee, and pretty quickly decided to go for it ... we'll never be back here again! 

After signing up for the cruise we went and did some shopping for dinner ... we'll have to get used to it as we don't think we'll be eating in restaurants very much from now on.......

Day 9 - Heading to the end of the world with no idea ....

Punta del Este (Uruguay) to Buenos Aires (Argentina)

Basically a day of travel today, taking an 8.30am bus to Montevideo, then changing to another bus for Colonía, followed by the ferry back to Buenos Aires. 

Typical Punta del Este tourists ... just lying around.

All very uninteresting, one amusing bit was waiting in the line for the ferry at Colonía. We were talking to a guy from Canada and then an older man behind us said "Did I hear you say you were going to Ushuaia tomorrow?", so we started chatting with both of them. They were both surprised that we were travelling to "The End of the World" without a concrete plan and just a hope that we would be able to get a deal on an Antarctica cruise. The Canadian called us "adventurers", while the other guy from the US appeared horrified by our lack of planing - it turns out he was catching a charter flight to Ushuaia the next day to go on a cruise through Antarctica to Cape Town for three weeks. As soon as it was time to board his lordship from the US bolted to the other side of the ferry, away from us peasants!

Day 5 - Into the unknown (at last)

Buenos Aires (Argentina) to Montevideo (Uruguay)

An early start to catch the ferry across the Rio Plata to the historic city of Colonía del Sacramento in Uruguay. At this point we are now travelling to places we haven't been before. The water was full of some sort of weed that appeared to be clogging all the water ways, and at one stage the ferry stopped and an announcement was made about some problem with the river, but that was all K could grasp from the rapid fire Spanish, we got going again after about 10 minutes but only slowly.

Overlooking Colonia from the old lighthouse

We arrived in Colonía and spent a few hours wandering around the old buildings and the waterfront, it all looked very Spanish with cute plazas and open air cafes and restaurants, something that we noticed was missing in Buenos Aires. We then caught the bus for the two and a half hour trip to Montevideo.

We booked into our Airbnb apartment in a fabulous location right on the main street of the old city, then went exploring, following the waterfront which pretty much surrounded the city in three out of four sides.

Day 4 - Don't roll your eyes at me, just do your job!

Buenos Aires

This morning we decided to walk to Recoleta, which is an upmarket suburb and also the area where Eva Peron is buried. We didn't go into the cemetery to see her tomb as we had visited it on our last trip, but we did walk to the giant lotus flower which we had missed last time. It is quite amazing how this massive metal structure resembling a lotus opens with the sun each day and closes as the sun goes down each evening.

Sure, it looks like a giant metal lotus flower,
 but what if it's really some sort of transmitter?

The weather was very warm and humid but much improved in the evening when we decided to walk back to the neighbourhood we had stayed at last time to revisit one of the great steak restaurants there. After reviewing the options though we decided to head back closer to home. It started pouring rain on the way so we ended up sheltering in a nice looking steak place for dinner. It was a good decision, although K was a little put out by the way the waiter rolled his eyes when we asked for pepper and chimmichurri.

By the time dinner was over the rain had stopped, so back to our apartment for an early night, as we had an early ferry to catch the next day.

Day 3 - The longest day

Auckland to Buenos Aires

Our flight from Auckland to Buenos Aires didn't leave until 7pm, so we left our bags at the hotel and walked to the Auckland Museum. Auckland is pretty hilly, and the museum is on top of one of those hills (probably another one of those extinct volcanoes), surrounded by parkland and a nice view.

Gives the term "gardening" a whole new meaning!

The museum was interesting, with some Maori history and a war memorial. We also had a chance to try out virtual reality in an AIr New Zealand display, which was pretty cool ... I think I want an Oculus Rift now!

We picked up our cases and caught the airport bus, and once on board we settled in for the 12 hour flight to Buenos Aires. As we crossed the international date line we arrived four hours or so before we left ... so we ended up landing around 4pm.

We had a bit of trouble with getting a taxi, the airport taxi drivers get to pick and choose which fares they want to take, and for some reason they didn't seem to want to take us. Eventually though we made it to our airbnb apartment well located in town. We walked around for a whlle, then had dinner. 

By the time we had finished it was around 10pm, and since we had woken up around 8am NZ time, caught a plane at 7pm NZ time, arrived 12 hours later at 4pm Argentine time, then stayed up until 10pm, it had been a very long day ... but hopefully we'd managed to avoid jet lag as a result.