Pucon - el fuma Volcan

After spending most of the day at a border crossing between Agentina and Chile (everything that they say about South America being slow slow slow is true, these guys are VERY laid back!), we finally arrived in glistening Pucon. Pucon is a small town in Chile, with the active and smoky Villarica volcano in the distance. We stayed in a Chilean family-run homely hostel, where they insist that everyone speak Spanish there - so it was a good opportunity to practice some of our new phrases and see if we're understood! The Chileans are lovely people, very friendly, happy and genuine but speak this quite peculiar slurry Spanish.
We met a good group of people at the hostel and ended up in a local pub until 5am...we finally had a night out! whooopeee The next day we headed to Parc Huaquehue for some more trekking, although this time we decided to spoil ourselves with a stay at a refugio overnight, and so left the tent behind. Luckily for us, we had the whole place to ourselves, so we cooked dinner, had a sauna in the forest (!!) and parked ourselves by the roaring fire with a glass of red wine before our big hike up Cerro San Sabastian the next day. Now this was a big and challenging hike - it was just the two of us and we had a time limit to make it back to the bus by 5pm. The map indicated that it would take 5 hrs each way and the refugio owner recommended 3 1/2 hrs, however we'd still need to shave off an hour to make it in time. So Tom kicked off the morning with a cracking pace straight up the mountain. It was a really diverse trek with lots of clambering over trees and rocks - in fact the last hour was almost vertical, and we were surrounded by ice and snow. Always interesting when your best shoes are Nike trainers and you're wearing jeans!! We certainly did not look the part. The view from the top of the mountain made all of the wheezing, puffing and panting worthwhile. At almost 2000m in height we had a 360 degree view over the Andes and 2 volcanoes - Lanin in Argentina and Villarica in Chile. Needless to say we did make the bus back to town with an extra hour to spare - go us, we shaved a good 1 1/2 hrs off the trek time. We're finally starting to get our confidence back after the Torres Del Paine (rather painful) experience!!

2 little happy campers - road trip through The Lakes District, Argentina

We arrived in Bariloche after a short bus ride (5 hr bus rides are now seemingly short after the 24hr rides we have become quite used to!) from a small and sleepy town called Esquel. Bariloche is known for its Swiss Alps vibe and raging night-life - wooden chalets, gore-tex and chocolate shops adorn every street. It's the 'very very' low season - a shoulder period between summer and the winter ski season, so the town was quiet to say the least. That pub trip and taste of night-life that we had been looking forward to unfortunately was not going to be happening in Bariloche...so we resigned to the fact that we'd have to wait until Santiago for that!
However, luckily for us, the weather was beautiful which meant that we had picture perfect views of the moutains reflecting in the lakes that surround the town. So we hired our little VW Golf and headed off on a 3 day camping road trip on the '7 lakes' route to San Martin De Los Andes. We thought that our trip was doomed as we left Bariloche as Tom decided to join in with the locals and overtake a truck. Unfortunately his timing was out and he did this just before a police check point. Unbeknown to us, this is a big 'no no'. We were pulled over and Tom was frogmarched into the office, while I sat praying in the car that we would not be slapped with a massive fine. Luckily the Police found it hilarious and Tom was let off 'as a stupid gringo, not knowing the road rules '!
After a shaky start, we finally hit the open road and had an amazing 3 days, camping and driving. The views were truly spectacular and the campsites empty, except for the ....dogs! Our first night camping we had the company of 6 dogs and on the second night a wolf-like dog befriended Tom. hmmm the dogs in South America are like something else, they love to follow you around the streets for hours. In fact you can go into a restaurant for dinner and they wil be waiting outside to escort you home when you leave!


Our trusty little camp stove comes everywhere with us. A cup of soup, tea or noodles is only a matter of minutes away.

Mount Fitzroy beauty

We took a 3 hour bus to El Chalten and decided to stay for a few days. It's low season, so the hostel and bus company were offering a whoppa deal for 2 nights which was too good to turn down. We had contemplated camping, however we were glad to have been in the comfort of the hostel after hearing the howling winds that came through the valley at night.
El Chalten is a small town in a valley surrounded by mountains and appears to be growing at a phenomenal rate - 10 years ago 3000 people visited the national park, this year over 100,000 people visited!! After exploring the area it's really not surprising, as the treks and the views were awesome. On the first day we did a couple of treks to lakes and through forests and on the second day we trekked to Lago Torre, a lake with icebergs floating in it and Glaciar Grande in the distance. It was truly a postcard view, and utterly freezing! We whipped out our little camp stove and cooked up noodles to warm up, and filled up our water bottles straight out of the glacial lake. Bliss.