After staying overnight in San Pedro, in Northern Chile,
\nwe were off again, hot footing it down the highway bound
\nfor Santiago. But on the way we discovered that Chile has
\nthe most marvellous loos (washrooms), as I’ve said
\nearlier, every service station welcomes one with hot water,
\ntoilet paper, toilet attendants who seem to take a pride in
\nkeeping their domain clean … And our group pigged out on
\nice cream, chocolate, crisps and other fattening snacks
\nfrom the Esso shop! Then we discovered La Serena, a seaside
\nresort in Chile with the most marvellous shops. I am
\nashamed to say we revelled in the cleanliness, the sheer
\nEuropean look of the place and again lots of money was
\nspent on clothes and food and stocking up on film and even
\none of our members bought a tent in order to free himself
\nfrom a two-man tent which wasn’t really big enough
\nfor him and his companion!<\/p>\n
And so on to Santiago, a place we could have done with
\nstaying in a little longer but unfortunately, time was
\nshort. We arrived in the late afternoon, stayed just two
\nnights and were away very early on the second morning,
\nhaving acquired two new people and reacquired one of our
\nmembers who was supposed to leave us in Santiago and join
\nanother truck as we had three new people supposedly joining
\nus, but at the last minute, the third new person had
\nslipped a disc and was unable to come so our departing
\nmember was suddenly rejoining us, much to our pleasure as
\nwe have all bonded now and were sorry enough to see two of
\nour group depart at the end of their respective trips, one
\nto return to Scotland and the other to Australia.<\/p>\n
And so I am now in Pucón and here we stay for three
\ndays. There is a volcano to climb, horse riding to be done,
\nrafting and trekking, etc, but at the moment all yours
\ntruly is doing is catching up on e-mails and chilling out.
\nThere is a lovely lake to go and sit beside or wander
\naround and for the time being I am going to do my own thing
\nand try and get some time to myself – all this togetherness
\ntends to pall after a while and it is nice to say –
\n“Cheerio,” to the people taking packed lunches
\noff to their various day long activities and to as it were,
\nmentally close the door on them and take my shoes off, put
\nmy feet up and relax!<\/p>\n
From Pucón we went on to Bariloche, which is a small but
\ninteresting little town and I would have liked to stay
\nthere longer than the one night but it wasn’t to be.
\nWe camped outside of Bariloche for just the one night (I
\nhate these one nighters, all that trouble of putting the
\ntent up for 12 hours and then taking it down again) but
\nthat’s life on the road! From Bariloche we went to a
\nplace called Perito Moreno where again we spent the one
\nnight and then on to our next port of call, a place called
\nEl Chalten. We stayed here for three nights when members of
\nour group went rafting (two fell out into the river and got
\nquite a fright) and others went glacier walking leaving the
\ncamp site at 0500 in the morning and not getting back until
\n2100. They said they had a good time and although quite a
\nfrightening and challenging one as well as the weather was
\nnone too good up high and they were all very sore from
\nmuscles that were overstrained.<\/p>\n
My friend Judith and I went on a long, long trek that
\nwas meant to last 8 hours but in fact stretched out to 12
\nhours as we took a different path on the way back and
\ndiscovered it was a very circuitous route. Needless to say
\nwe were exhausted by the finish as we had left at 0820 and
\ngot back at 2045! Luckily the group had got a barbecue
\ngoing and we arrived just at serving up time! And we beat
\nthe glacier walkers who clocked in just 15 minutes later.
\nBut the first part of our trek was fantastic. We were
\nwalking to view some glaciers rather than walk them and for
\nthe whole of our walk, the full 8 hours, on the outward and
\nreturn journey, we were seeing those beautiful snow clad
\npeaks with their blue glaciers shimmering in the sunshine
\nand could not resist taking picture after picture after
\npicture of virtually the same scene but seen from different
\naspects. I dare say we will both throw away most of them
\nbut we were enthralled. And when we eventually arrived at
\nthe foot of the glacier (still out of sight) we had to
\ncross a fast flowing river coming down from the glacier and
\nthere were only two logs straddling each other with no
\nhandholds.<\/p>\n
Luckily, there was a man who had attempted to cross with
\nother women and he was standing astride the logs in the
\ncentre of the stream and another man was assisting us from
\nthe bank so we managed somehow to straddle the logs in a
\nprone position and inch our way across with help! Judith
\nwent first and so I had to follow but my heart was in my
\nmouth the whole time and I didn’t dare think of what
\nmight happen if I slipped or the man helping me lost his
\nhand hold on me! But I got over and it was a great
\nachievement. Then after a walk up a gentle slope we came to
\na real hard climb with lots of loose shale and small
\nboulders with hardly any hand holds and only the occasional
\nprickly bush to grab hold of and immediately let go of and
\nso often it was a case of scrabbling on hands and knees to
\nget up to the top. But finally we managed to get to the
\nfirst summit, so to speak only to find a downward slope
\nleading to another upward slope, but we were determined to
\ncarry on and it was well worth it as when we did get to the
\nfoot of the actual glacier it was the most beautiful sight
\nwe had seen in a long time as there was a brilliant blue
\nlake and these fantastic glaciers cascading down the
\nmountain. We sat and ate our lunch there and just marvelled
\nat the scenery and of course took heaps more photos. But we
\nwere the only two to do this particular walk because the
\nmembers of our group had gone to see a completely different
\nmore popular glacier in the opposite direction to us.<\/p>\n