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PataGONEia

oktober - december 2017
En 49-dags äventyr från Delaneys to Go Läs mer
  • 16fotavtryck
  • 5länder
  • 49dagar
  • 46foton
  • 0videoklipp
  • 21,4kkilometer
  • 15,9kkilometer
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Datum stigande
  • ResenärPataGONEia
    Dag 31

    Puerto Chacabuco, Chile

    23 november 2017, Chile ⋅ 🌙 13 °C

    I am officially calling this the “All Seasons Cruise"! Buenos Aires was summer, Montevideo was fall, Port Stanley to Laguna San Rafael was winter and today in Puerto Chacabucco, we found spring.

    It is a lovely day here, mid-60's (or about 16 C) with brilliant sunshine. Brian and I were off on a private tour with 2 other couples to the Simpson Valley and Coyhaique; the others are doing the same route with a ship excursion. Lautaro is our Tours by Locals guide. There have been lectures on board about the history and culture of this area so we know he was named for a famous Maputo indian who led his nation at the time of the Spanish invasion. The Maputo are the only indigenous tribe to defeat the Spanish and hold on to their land. Lautaro tells us that the Maputo have intermarried for generations with the Europeans and other South Americans but there still is a note of pride as he speaks of his heritage.

    Our trip today included a trip up the Simpson Valley to Coyhaique, the regional capital. Puerto Chacabuco originally was the capital but Pinochet decided to move it to Coyhaique, a more central location. To entice skilled workers, he offered a guaranteed job and tax free cars. Given that this is a remote city with access only by one road and air, this is a strong incentive but the purchaser has to live in Coyhaique. Pinochet threw money and manpower at completion of a paved road up the valley and built a modern road in record time. This is a region where 70% of roads are gravel. Close to Coyhaique, the road changes from asphalt to brick. Why? Because due to the heavy rain fall, the ground shifts, making it very difficult to maintain an asphalt surface. (It rains in Puerto Chacabuco 280 days a year!).

    Coyhaique means ‘between waters’. It is where the Simpson and Coyhaique rivers meet. The Simpson Valley and river were named for the European explorer who was searching for a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Now it is a popular fly fishing destination for trout and salmon. We stumbled on a school projects display in the Placa des Armes and had fun talking to the kids.

    Halfway between Coyhaique and Puerto Chacabuco is Puerto Aysen, a small town of 22,000. The main employers are the forestry and the fishing industries. Puerto Chacabuco is an industrial port and while it has invested in a lovely cruise terminal, it does not have much to offer a tourist.

    This was a very successful day. We finally saw the Andes, saw more of the land and enjoyed beautiful sunshine.

    Next stop is Puerto Montt.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärPataGONEia
    Dag 32

    Puerto Montt, chile

    24 november 2017, South Pacific Ocean ⋅ 🌧 0 °C

    Puerto Montt is a relatively young city, founded in 1853 after immigration sponsored by Germany. The German influence is still strong with a significant percentage of the population identifying with a German heritage and it supports a German school.

    Puerto Montt has gained renown as the second largest salmon producer in the world (after Norway). The economy is strong and unemployment at 3%. It is the capital of the region (Chile has regions rather than states or provinces). It is also home to 4 universities and 5 technical schools and has a stong public and private education system.

    This area is known as the Lakes District and has 2,000 islands, only half of which are inhabited. The houses are typically clad in wooden shakes, in a scalloped pattern which gives the houses a European flavor. The houses built by the early German immigrants are large, 2 stories houses with turrets and lots of windows. They would not look out of place in downtown Toronto.

    The houses built by the Chilean people tend to be single-story and much simpler. They are heated by wood, although Chile is making efforts to develop renewable energy. Stores and industries tend to be in steel clad buildings, all of which look very similar so it is difficult to know who is making or selling, what. Neighborhoods are doted with small mini-marts, often built into the ground floor of the family home.

    The main employers in this area are the salmon fishery, farming (dairy, pork and potatoes) and tourism; fly fishing is a big draw to this area.

    From Puerto Montt, we drove to Frutillar, a charming Bavarian-style village on the edge of Lago Llanquihue.. It was a beautiful drive along a winding road and we kept catching glimpses of Volcan Osorno which gradually emerged as morning mist burned off. (It bears a strong resemblance to Mount Fuji.) Frutillar is reminiscent of the tourist areas like Niagara on the Lake or Lake Louise. Fortunately it is the start of the summer so the crowds were minimal. There is clearly a pride of property here and the gardens were gorgeous with rhododendrons, roses, lilies, lilacs, wisteria and others in full bloom.

    We finished our day with lunch and craft shopping in Puerto Vares before hitting one more craft market just outside the pier gates. The weather improved steadily all day and by the time we returned to the ship, our jackets were off!

    Thank you to the Hadleys for arranging this tour with ViaTours.

    ,    Läs mer

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  • ResenärPataGONEia
    Dag 34

    Santiago, Chile

    26 november 2017, Chile ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    Today started on a rough note.We docked in San Antonio, a rough looking industrial port. Barb Trodd has a bad case of the cold and elected to see the ship's doctor. The rest of us headed out to meet our Tours by Locals guide on a misty, overcast and cool day. Victor Hugo (the guide) was late due to traffic problems and when he arrived, advised that we should change our plans and go to Santiago, rather than Valparaiso. His reasoning was that Valparaiso was due to have foggy and rainy weather all day so the touring would be pour. Santiago, the capital city, was forecast to have sunny and hot weather. So, despite our disappointment, we decided to take his recommendation.

    In the end, this turned out to be a good choice. Wendy and I, in particular liked Santiago and felt that it would warrant a return, multi-day trip.

    Santiago is the capital of Chile and is a very attractive city. It's 49 public parks (which are watered year round) have a wide variety of tress and flowers. As we were visiting on a beautiful Sunday, they were well used by the city's 8 million people. The people we saw appeared prosperous. Lots of families and very few street people. During the day, this is a safe city to walk in as there is a heavy presence of Carbineros (armed police officers), who, according to our guide, did not accept bribes. Noteworthy in South America, I guess. Definitely noteworthy is that over 50% of the Carbineros are women.

    Santiago was founded in 1541 by the Spanish and built following a street grid model. A river ran through the centre of the city was eventually re-routed and the river bed was used to create a wide boulevard that crosses the whole city. In addition to at least 2 lanes of traffic in each direction, it has a park-like boulevard for it's entire length. 47 districts have developed within the city, each with its own mayor! Hard to believe, but the mayors must work together to address common needs. It seems to be working as the streets, sidewalks, parks, monuments etc all seem to be in good condition and well maintained. Web saw very little litter or graffiti.

    Many of the neighborhoods have specialties such as specific products (for example shoes or women's clothing), restaurants and nightclubs, upper class housing and so on. Of course, ground zero is the Playa de Armas where the Spanish founded the city. Here, as in much of the downtown core, there is a mix of ultra modern buildings and Colonial structures (with a distinct Spanish look). Some of the modern buildings have unique facades. This mix makes for a visually interesting city.

    Behind the Presidential palace, now an administrative building, we watched the changing of the guard. It was a ceremony with soldiers, horses, and a band and very reminiscent of the ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

    But it was the flowers everywhere that I will remember the most. We finished our tour in the lovely Estacia Santa Lucia which is a part at the highest city point. The profusion of trees and flowers, and the care taken with the gardens was unlike any we had seen elsewhere in South America. When we climbed to the highest point and looked out over the city with the Andes in the distance, Wendy commented that it reminded her of Vancouver. I had to agree.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärPataGONEia
    Dag 37

    Arica, Chile

    29 november 2017, Chile ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    Arica, like many of the ports at which we have stopped in Chile, is an industrial container port. Here, we are told that the port was established by the Spanish in 1530 for imports and exports from Bolivia;it continues today as a freeport for Bolivia. We are only 18 km south of Peru .

    Arica has mild weather, year round so in the summer, it is a popular resort for Bolivians. There are palm trees, jacaranda, bougainvillea and oleander, as one might expect in a mild climate but everything depends on constant irrigation.

    Arica's main employers are Coca-Cola, mining, fishing and argriculture and many of its workers come from Peru and Bolivia on 7-day work visas. Each weekend they go home, re-apply for a 7-day visa and come back for the work week.

    Arica is a fairly non-descript town in a valley between the sea and the desert. Normally, 'valley' suggests a river and although Arica technically has a river, it only has water a few days a year. The town has 3 buildings designed by Gustave Eiffel and a pleasant square with a few craft vendors. The most memorable feature however, is a large sand and rock cliff with a massive Chilean flag on the top. The driest desert in the world surrounds Arica on 3 sides but there is surprisingly little dust or sand in the air.

    I took a tour to the archeological museum and an olive farm; the others went to the desert to see giant sculptures; they also visited the museum.

    My tour started at a small replica village with a church and a group of small houses which now serve as artisanal workshops. Unfortunately, it was a bit early for the artists but we wondered around in the sunshine and visited a lovely small Catholic church. A notable feature of the church is the hand-painted stations of the cross, done by indigenous artists.

    Second stop was the Museo Arqueologico San Miguel de Azapa (archeological museum) with its display of mummies. These mummies include 2 of the oldest mummies in the world. They are from the Chinchorro Indian civilization. These 8,000 year old mummies continue to be found around Arica as the community spreads. The display was very well done, if a bit unsettling.

    Our last stop was an olive farm to learn about agriculture in the valley. The first 30 olive vines were sent by the King of Spain to the rulers of Peru (who controlled this area at that time). Only one plant survived to be planted. From that single vine has grown a robust olive industry, totally dependent on drip irrigation and water from deep wells. The water for irrigation comes from a canal originating in the Andes. The farmers join co-operatives and 'buy' access to the water which is monitored and restricted to a few hours on specific days. Olive trees send deep roots (as deep as they are tall) which presumably helps them find sources of deep ground water to supplement the irrigation. The farm we visited grew three types of olives (green, black and mullato) which are brined in large vats for 1-2 years. The pickers are 7-day visa workers from Peru and Bolivia; a good worker can pick 400 kilograms a day and earn $40-50 USD per day.

    From 1500-1700s, Africans were brought to Chile by the Spaniards as slave labour and to replace the declining native population disseminated by disease, natural events (like tsunamis) and pirates. At one point, 90% of the population of the valley was of African descent so many of the current citizens trace their lineage back to Africa.

    The farm we visited also grew mangoes, guavas, papaya and limes. The trees were full of hummingbirds which made for a lovely stop. But the main crop in this area is the hard, pink tomato genetically modified for long-distance shipping. Perhaps some of tasteless winter tomatoes come from this valley!

    On our trip back to the ship, we saw some geoglyphs on the side of the hills which were surprisingly clear and easy to see.

    While some of our group really liked the strange, moon-like look and feel of the desert, I found the monochromatic landscape and the lack of green unsettling. To me the surrounding desert and the degree of effort required to keep it at bay, seemed unnatural. Our guide (whose other job is as a clinical psychologist) tells us that anxiety and depression are the main emotional complaints in the adult population; that did not surprise me.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärPataGONEia
    Dag 39

    Paracas, Peru

    1 december 2017, Peru ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    Another beautiful sunny day. We are docked across a bay from Paracas. This is the stop for excursions to the Nazca lines, Ises des Balladaras or the desert for dune buggy rides. Once again, we are docked in a commercial, industrial port, albeit much smaller than most of the others. Flatbed trucks are lined up waiting to get into the dockyards for their loads of iron bars.

    Wendy elects go for a boat tour of Iles des Balladaras which she later tells us was an excellent excursion. We are glad as we had done this the last time we were in this area and so had pushed the group to consider this excursion.

    The rest of the group take the shuttle into town and then engage a taxi driver to take them into the Paracas National Reserve outside Paracas.. This is a large protected area of the Peruvian desert. They found the landscape fascinating and saw some wild life.

    Brian and I decide to take the shuttle into the village of Paracas and walk the boardwalk. As soon as we got there, we remembered coming there on our previous visit to Peru. I had bought some earrings from a vendor (which I still have and wear a lot in the summer) and we had lunch at one of the open air restaurants. This time, we just walked the boardwalk which was surprisingly busy for an early Friday afternoon. We later found out that this was the first day of winter holidays for the kids; the beach was full of families playing in the sand, with some swimming.

    One of the attractions was a man and his trained pelican (who knew you could train a pelican). The pelican patiently stood and waited for a tourist to pose with him (her?) for a picture. The man would count to three and throw a piece of fish to the pelican, so the shot was of the tourist next to a pelican reaching for the fish. The woman we watched got a face full of pelican feathers when the bird spread it's wings succenly (for balance?) and wapped her in the face! Ugh, no thanks!

    Tonight is our last night on the ship so we need to pack before bed. Suitcases outside our cabin doors by 10:00 p.m.    Läs mer

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  • ResenärPataGONEia
    Dag 49

    Hello Lima, Goodbye Oceania Sirena

    11 december 2017, Peru ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C

    No matter how luxurious the cruise, when it is time to get off, it's hard not to feel like you are being thrown out with the trash! Generally, everyone has to be off no later than 9:00 a.m. Wendy and I were assigned to the first departure group as we had to meet our driver to the SkyKItchen cooking school at 8:00.

    The port was once again an indusstrial, commercial port. The area assigned to the Sirena was quite small and when Wendy and I walked off, it was full of luggage, buses and men waving their arms. We wormed our way through the crowds to the shuttle bus which takes us out of the port area, to a different part of the port where the taxis and tours awaited. When we got off the shuttle bus, we were swarmed by taxi drivers who were generally polite, if persistent. All under the eye of two very disinterested heavily armed police officers. Fortunately, our driver was waiting for us and whipped us off to meet, Diego, our cooking instructor.

    I found it interesting that the port and the airport are in a distinct district called Callao. It is surrounded by the city of Lima but is a separate district. This is the area of Lima that tourists are cautioned not to walk around in (even during the day) and it was easy to see why.

    We met up with Diego at the local Mercado which is a huge indoor market that sells pretty much everything needed to run a household. But we were there to see the wide variety of fruits and vegetables used in Peruvian cooking, many of them native to the area. After 40 min. in the market, we headed to the SkyKitchen cooking school which is, somewhat surprisingly, on the 3rd floor of a residential building in Miraflores (an affluent part of Lima). The owner lives on the first floor of this 2 story apartment and has converted the 3rd floor to one large kitchen/dining/patio area. About half of it was open to the sky, hence the name of the school. As it was another beautiful sunny day, it was a pleasure to be up there.

    Diego had us taste a variety of fruits, some of which we were familiar with and some which were new to us. Needless to say, some better than others. The most surprising was the cucumber melon (a green melon like honeydew that tasted like cucumber) and an apple banana that taste like, well an apple-flavoured banana.

    Wendy and I were joined by 2 hikers from the Netherlands and a man from Kansas City. The other half of the class were 3 Spanish speaking women with their own teacher. We learned to make Causa (a tower of mashed potatoes, avocado, and chicken salad; (way better than it sounds), ceviche (fish salad cooked in vinegar - a national obsession in Peru), Lomo Saltine (a beef stir fry) and Picorones ( a sweet donut dipped in a cane sugar syrup which tasted a lot like molasses).

    A couple of comments about the food. Everything had lime juice in it and so it all tasted fresh and tangy...really nice. A ubiquitous condiment is a paste made out of the Yellow Pepper (which is actually orange). Diego warned us that it is impossible to recreate with peppers available to us here and encouraged us to source it through a Peruvian grocery store when we got home. The beef stir fry seemed a little out of place until Diego explained that the influx of Chinese workers in the 1800's resulted in a Peuvian/Chinese fusion cuisine called Chifo; there are lots of Chifo restaurants in Lima.

    Menawhile, Brian, the Hadleys, Trodds and Bonnie were stuck on the ship till 10 a.m., as it was chaos where the shuttles were trying to unload the passengers. As we thought we couldn't check in to our hotel, the wait was not a hardship. Brian hired 2 taxis that were relics from the 2nd World War to take us to our hotel and by the grace of God we all made it shaken but not stirred. The hotel staff were great; no hassle having 2 families sharing each room. The concierge found us a tour of Lima that picked us up and dropped us off at our hotel. We had time for a nice lunch in the hotel then off to explore.

    We hit the main tourist spots: the view from the cliffs of the ocean and daring para-sailors; the main square, the 'mud made' pyramid; the Jiron De La Union & Museo Convento San Francisco y Catacumbas, (the latter, a monastery built in 1673, with a Spanish Baroque church and discovered in 1943, catacombs containing the bones of 25,000 bodies).

    The rest of the crew left for the airport that night and I was on my own so I went to Wendy's hotel to have dinner with Wendy and Christine. The food was surprisingly good for a hotel dining room (Christine had a terrific fish soup called Suda Suda; a fitting end to a cooking school day.)

    The next morning while Christine waited in Bogata, I had a lovely, leisurely stroll of the area, got a haircut in a shop about the size of our bathroom and had some delicious empanadas at a local cafe. My ride to the airport was a pleasant one (a new car, thank God) as my driver wanted to be an English teacher and used the opportunity to practice. Once checked in, I had a great cup of coffee and a pleasant conversation with 2 missionaries on their way to a new posting    Läs mer

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