Merry goes places

I had a fantastic trip north on the "Carretera Austral", a 1200 km road that connects southern Patagonia towards central Chile. Our travel family kept growing and changing and it felt nice, after spending a bunch of time by myself, to build friendships and travel together for parts of the way. The hardest one was "losing" Daniela and Benji who stayed​ in Rio Tranquilo to do more trekking there (pic 1 together with our hermano Nicolas from France). Our paths had kept crossing since my very first day in Chile and they make wonderful travel siblings - adventures, lots of laughs and some of the best talks I've had on my travels. But I already know I'll see them again!

And so Nicolas and I kept the family alive :) Most the way we made via bus, but also by walking, hitch hiking and a 9 hour ferry for the last bit. Some highlights of the week include finding and making food together in small towns, learning more Spanish as for example from Juan who we met on the ferry and who was killing time by teaching me some grammar (pic 6). We also watched the luckiest drivers in Chile: three tourists in a rental car ran into a ditch full speed while trying to pass our bus on the narrow road. By a wonder, they were unharmed because they hit soft bushes and pretty deep mud. 5 minutes after the accident, a semitruck passed by that happened to have a small crane - and pulled their car out of the mud. Another 10 minutes later, they were driving again with as little as a few scratches and a few pounds of mud on the vehicle but nobody hurt (pic 3).

One the last stretch, we were unable to get bus tickets and "stuck" in Chaitén for a day, which turned into a fun adventure - this one will get its own blog post though :)

Thanks everyone who shared these adventures for long or short times!Lue lisää