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Half around the world and back
  • Susanne and Machiel
Nov 2019 – Mar 2020

Half around the world and back

Susanne & Machiel attempt to travel for a bit. Read more
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  • Trip start
    November 7, 2019
    Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Here we go

    November 7, 2019 in the Netherlands ⋅ ⛅ 8 °C

    This morning we woke up and thought 'let's go on a world trip'. Everything is packed, the bags are checked in and we are now waiting to board our first flight.

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Amazing Toronto

    November 7, 2019 in Canada ⋅ ❄️ 0 °C

    After an 8 hour flight we arrived at the airport of Toronto just to wait another 8 hours here for our flight to Santiago. After almost 7 hours of waiting and attempted napping we are pretty exhausted. We're contemplating whether paying 3000 euro for a direct flight would've been worth it. Just kidding. We've seen enough of Canada and feel ready for our next destination.Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Santiago

    November 9, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    After traveling for so long it was so nice to finally see a familiar face. Daniel will join us for the South-American leg of our trip. If we're lucky he might even write a guest post or two... 😉 We spent a night in Santiago at the friendly hosts of the Matsofy house. We walked a bit around in the neighbourhood. The overall image was very different to home. Houses looked very colorful, every house had a high fence with spikes on top and almost every house had at least one dog that liked barking. It wasn't close to the center but in the evening you could still hear some protests going on. Also, most supermarkets are closed because they were raided in the last weeks. Luckily there were still a lot of very tiny minimarkets to keep us feeded.

    We arrived at our hostel after almost 30 hours of traveling but it felt as if half a week had passed. It was 1 pm when we arrived and we decided to immediately adjust to the local time. This meant fighting the urge to sleep for several hours and we were very happy when we could finally go to bed to have a very long night of sleep.

    Now we are again at Santiago airport to head to the north... Atacama desert is waiting for us.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    2

    San Pedro

    November 10, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    Yesterday a short flight brought us to Calama Airport, from which we took a bus to the nearby town of San Pedro in the Atacama desert. It's a bit dry and dusty here for some reason. And the breakfast is so tasteful it took our breath away quite literally.Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    241

    Walking on the moon

    November 10, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    Being three indecisive people we spend most of the day trying to decide how we wanted to spend our days in this place. While a few things might be reachable by bike, a tour or a rental vehicle would be necessary to reach the most interesting things. Also we were not sure how doable cycling in the desert is when you are still adjusting to the altitude and dry hot climate. So we were sure we wanted to book some tours.

    But... which tours? How many tours? How much money and time did we want to spend on them? And how to decide on one out of more than 100 tour agencies?
    They all offer about the same tours for slightly different prices and with slightly different details. Looking up some reviews online it seems that with the cheaper ones the chance that vehicles break down during the tour is a bit higher.

    Finally we decided to go for a package of one tour a day (5) for about 170 € per person including park entry fees and applicable meals. Of course we only decided one hour before our first tour would start 😉 Grabbing water, sunscreen and a hat, we went to visit the valley of the moon. After a short bus ride, we arrived surrounded by rocks and dunes often covered in a layer of salt. This salt, the dust and sand we will probably still find in our clothes at the end of this year...    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    1

    Salt

    November 11, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☁️ 28 °C

    The tour of the day took us to the salt lakes Cejar and Piedra locally referred to as the Dead Sea of Chile. We were allowed to swim in the latter, which was an interesting experience. The Andes and its volcanoes provided the perfect backdrop. After a quick shower to rinse off the salt, we visited sweet-water crater lakes. While a desert, Atacama apparently does have quite some water underground. The tour ended with a sunset at lake Tebinquiche. What looks like ice is actually salt.Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    The devil's throat

    November 12, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    Due to a national strike in Chile on Tuesday, our tour of the day got postponed. Only hearing about this on Monday evening from the operator, we only just managed to rent mountain bikes in the town center so that we could take them out for a spin on Tuesday morning. Besides the bikes, we received some fancy vests and helmets. We planned to leave right after sunrise to avoid the heat in the afternoon. In combination with the heat, the humidity (or lack of) is actually what makes it so tough to adjust to the climate of the Atacama desert. It hovers around 15% and is a killer of our hands, noses and lips. We're going through creme like crazy.

    So after a bit of predictable delay we set off to 'Gargante del Diablo' . It was a gorgeous gorge with an excellent biking trail. It was also deserted, we only came across 2 other bikers on the trail. We took longer than expected, but that had more to with us stopping every 100 meters to take pictures and losing the way at one point, rather than anything to do with our mountain biking skills (we were awesome and did some rad stunts).

    Having lunch back in town we saw quite some footage of protests going on in various cities. Pretty shocking to watch.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Lagunes and mountains without Machiel

    November 13, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 0 °C

    After a quite bad night with lots of mosquitos in which Machiel did not feel well, we had to start our only full day tour with only two of us. Pickup time was at 7am and in the coming 10 hours we saw 5 lagunas and some local animals.

    On the way to our first stop we passed some still smoking remains of a road blockage from the protests yesterday. Luckily that did not stop us to reach the chaxa lagune where we could see our first flamingos of this trip. It was nice to see how peacefully they were sticking their heads in the water to find food. It was also nice and a bit surprising to see once more how nature seems to be respected here. Paths were marked well and tour guides make sure everyone stays within them.

    After a very nice breakfast with fresh and not stone-dry (finally!) bread, we continued to rise in altitude. At around 4200m it was noticeably colder and we visited laguna Miscanti and Laguna Miniques. The first one was partially covered by ice (and not salt like we are used to by now) which reminded us a bit of Norway.

    Further up the road we visited Laguna Salar de Talar. We were only allowed to see it from two viewpoints since some idiot tried kyte surfing there in January. Surprisingly this was not appreciated by the flamingos and locals and direct access to the water has since been closed. Nonetheless the view was stunning in such a colorful landscape and was together with the flamingos the highlight of this tour.

    After seeing one more lagune close to the Argentinian border, it was time to turn around to get lunch in a small restaurant in Socaire. On the way we saw some wild vicunas, the non-domesticated ancestor of the lama. And in the town of Toconao we saw some young lamas on a farm.

    Back in town we went out for dinner with Machiel who had been in bed most of the day.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    About freezing toes and hot geysers

    November 14, 2019 in Chile ⋅ 🌙 -3 °C

    Again without Machiel we had to leave as early as 4:30am with our tour to see the highest and third largest geothermal area of the world - Géisers del Tatio. Already in San Pedro we noticed that it was quite cold this early.

    After a 90 minute bus ride through the moonlit desert, we arrived once more at an altitude of 4200m and it was freezingly cold with -10 degrees. The contrast between all the steam and boiling water on one side and the frozen water on the marked paths, was quite a thing. And while walking with our tour guide through the area, I was happy to wear 2 pants and 4 upper layers. Nonetheless our toes and fingers started freezing pretty quickly and the sunrise was not only nice for the light effect but also appreciated for the warmth it brought. Overall a nice experience but after having been to Iceland also not that special. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of high water splashes.

    After breakfast in the first sunlight of the day, we had the chance to bath in some lukewarm springs to try to warm up our frozen body parts.

    Our next stop was a wetland with birds and on the way we were lucky to see again some cool local animals: rheas or ñandús (South American ostriches), viscachas (something looking like long-tailed bunnys which camouflage so well they are hard to spot in the rocky landscape), again vicuñas, more lamas and again flamingos 😊

    The last stop before returning to San Pedro was a small town with - according to our tour guide - 10 inhabitants but 20 houses and they were still busy building more... we did not really understand this but the local goat cheese was appreciated by Daniel 😉    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Stargazing

    November 14, 2019 in Chile ⋅ 🌙 17 °C

    The geyser tour wasn't the only planned activity on Thursday. Late in the evening we had our last, but not least, tour of the week. Machiel felt a bit better at this point and the astronomy tour was fairly short, so we decided to go with the three of us.

    The tour operator brought us to a nearby outdoor astrometry area where they had several huge programmable telescopes. The night sky was incredible when we got out of the van. We knew the almost full moon was going to appear later, so we made use of the time to soak up all the impressions. The guides then explained some aspects of stars, planets, and galaxies. We got to use the different telescopes that were set up to see Saturn and some particularly bright stars.

    The guides also provided us with some nice local food, so all in all it was a very nice evening. When the Moon showed up the amount of visible stars greatly decreased but it was also cool to observe it through a telescope. We tried to make some nice pictures (also through the telescopes) but of course it was mostly a very dark setting that was hard to capture with our camera.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    On the way to Patagonia... ?

    November 17, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    So Friday morning in San Pedro we packed our stuff and went to the bus station to travel to Calama. There we were gonna stay 1 night before early morning flights would take us to our first destination in Patagonia, Coyhaique, with a short stopover in Santiago. The bus was gonna take about 2 hours, turned out to be very warm and a nightmare for Machiel. Not completely fit yet, he suffered from blocked Eustachian tubes which messed up his pressures and completely blocked his hearing.

    Arriving in Calama, the bus we were in hit a bunch of electricity lines that were hanging across the streets because the roof windows were opened. A bus employee quickly closed them and we drove on. That happened to be the street however where our next line bus would drive through that would take us to our stay for the night, and when we arrived there on foot we saw the chaos it had caused. Most importantly, it appeared no busses were gonna stop at that busstop anymore. Thankfully a taxi wasn't much more expensive and we arrived at our stay.

    While Machiel was trying to get his hearing back and battle his nose cold, a stressful discussion started about if he could fly, especially 2 flights in a row, what else we could do with our booked flights, what our insurance situation was, etc. After calling our insurances and precautionarily reserving a taxi, we decided to try and sleep, wake up in the middle of the night and see how Machiel was doing. Since that appeared to be worse instead of better, we had to conclude to reschedule our flights. We then visited a clinic Saturday morning (the owner of the apartment very kindly drove us) where after a speedy check-up Machiel got an injection and subscribed more medicine than he had seen in years.

    Since then we're trying to recover as good as possible, enjoying the slightly better climate of Calama versus San Pedro, the friendly hosts, and better nights of sleep. Our flights are now scheduled for Tuesday morning.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Patagonia!

    November 19, 2019 in Chile ⋅ 🌧 11 °C

    We have arrived in a very cold and rainy Coyhaique. Quite the contrast with the Atacama desert! The flights thankfully went ok.

    Now we're finding out what we want to do here and how we want to reach Argentina by the end of next week to meet Franzi in El Chaltén.Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Hitting the road - Carretera Austral

    November 21, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    The style of Coyhaique is a mixture of Chilean and Scandinavian which made it very interesting to walk through. We found a nice place for lunch while discussing how we wanted to travel along the Carretera Austral. Renting a car has its advantages, but ultimately we decided for the bus. Knowing that busses might just go twice a week in some areas, our aim was to find out more about bus schedules to see how we can get to O'Higgins on time while seeing some nice stuff on the way. The Internet didn't help us a lot with it, but it turns out the tourist information does not really know much for sure either, so we had to call bus companies directly.

    But we managed to book something and Wednesday morning we took the bus to Villa Cerro Castillo. Several blogs said that fresh vegetables and fruits are scarse along the Carretera Austral, so we bought as much of those as we could fit. Arriving in the small town we set up camp for the first time on this trip. Without sun it got quite cold in the evening and we were excited to try out our new sleeping mats and bags.

    After 8 hours of good sleep we woke up warm to a wonderful blue sky and started our first real hike of the trip 😊 A bit of a lengthy discussion, joined by what felt like all the personnel of the national park, on if or if not it was a smart idea to try to reach the Mirador Cerro Castillo about 1100m higher up while walking through knee-high snow, made us decide to go for a lower viewpoint of Cerro Peñón. Almost 14 km return brought us to this nice spot with a view of the valley and the surrounding mountains covered in snow. Along the way we also saw a pretty nice waterfall.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    11

    Marble caves in Río Tranquilo

    November 22, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 10 °C

    We actually really liked our campsite. The grass field was really big, we shared it first with some horses and later with some chickens 😊 and the views were pretty amazing.

    Nonetheless, it was time for us to move further. So we had to pack our tents again to take the bus to Río Tranquilo. The bus ride took around 3 hours and went mostly over gravel road. That made it very dusty (yes, even in the bus) , but at the same time the landscape around us became really rough and it felt a bit as if we were on the way to the end of the world.

    The town of Río Tranquilo seems more touristic than Cerro Castillo (probably because of its main attraction - the marble caves) but the general setup seems very similar. Lots of tiny (sometimes improvised) houses, often combined with offering a home stay, camping or small minimarket. Different than what we read previously, those minimarkets actually have decent quality vegetables and fruits. While the choice is very limited the quality was surprisingly better than what we found in a supermarket in Coyhaique. After searching for a camping that was already open this early in the season, we arrived at a relatively busy (compared to the last one) but nice place.

    The sun was really strong and we were actually sweating without hiking for the first time since leaving the desert. Luckily this meant we had a really nice experience on our boat trip to the marble caves. The water was very turquoise, absolutely still and especially when reflecting the sunlight to the marble, it looked very cool.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    From Río Tranquilo to Cochrane

    November 23, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C

    Our prebooked bus to Cochrane was supposed to leave around 2pm. That meant we could sleep in a bit, have a relaxed breakfast and attempt a small hike to a viewpoint. To access the viewpoint we had to cross private property which the nearby minimarket owners kindly allowed. The local dogs did more than just allow it, they decided to join us and show us the way. After a short hour we arrived to a nice view over the lake and the surrounding mountains.

    Back in town, we packed out tents and went on a 3 hour bus ride. This time the bus wasn't dusty inside and the driver didn't seem to think that gravel roads should be taken slower. A lack of properly working seat belts made it more adventurous than anticipated.

    Cochrane seemed a bit like a sleepy town with not too much tourism pushed in your face, so we liked it. However, that also meant that we initially struggled to find information on how to reach nature without a car. The tourist information was closed opposed to their supposed opening times. Two tour agencies were open but their day tour offers were far too expensive for our taste. We opted to reserve rental bikes somewhere instead and closed off the day with some nice local dishes in one of the few restaurants.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    2

    Blue, so blue

    November 24, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C

    Having had enough of our milk-oat flakes-fruit-breakfast (not Susanne), and being lazy and being made enthusiastic by a review about the nice breakfast by the owner of our hostel, we arranged for breakfast to be made for us this morning. The homemade jams and cake (or how they are called here: kuchen) were nice but also not super special. We were the only guests at the hostel and the cat was making sure our ears were clean.

    At 10 we picked up our bikes and went on a short 4km trip to Reserve Nacional Tamango. Here we started our hike of the day to Los Carpinteros, a viewpoint over the river and lake Cochrane. It started off being a perfect mirror and along the trail turned into absolutely incredibly blue and clear water. The trail was relatively easy, through nice vegetation, only being disturbed by a few horseflies that liked to chase us. The weather was great and we enjoyed our brought lunch at the very nice viewpoint before heading back. As always we took our time. The 4 hours hike took us almost 6, we simply had to admire the views and the water. Luckily people are relaxed here and returning the bikes we rented for 6 hours after 7,5 was not a problem at all.

    Having had enough of our meat-rich dinners, we bought as many vegetables we think we could eat and ate them all. We had to hit the beds on time as our bus to Villa O'Higgins was leaving at 8am on the following day.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Reaching the end of Carretera Austral

    November 25, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☁️ 5 °C

    The bus ride to Villa O'Higgins seemed endless. At least there was a free ferry ride with nice views in between to spice things up, but the whole thing took like 7 hours. Research had told us that it was gonna be very cold and the positive reviews of a hostel with a true Finnish sauna convinced us to choose that rather than camping in lots of rain and 2-7 degrees. It ended up being a good decision, and one that most people took as we recognised a lot of hikers there that we met earlier on the Carretera Austral.

    Villa O'Higgins is one of the smaller towns on the route and the one where the road simply ends. There is no land-line, there is one turbine and a diesel-generator for electricity. Card-payments and phone calls only work if the reception is good. The Internet is unstable since everything goes via satellite. To say it with the words of our hostel: 'Think about how difficult it was to get here. Similar things happen to our WiFi.'

    As there is no road to southern Chile, the only ways to get there are via long ferry rides, or by driving back north and driving via Argentina. We however are going to Argentina anyway to check out El Chaltén and meet up with Franzi.

    Our main goals for the day were buying some food for dinner and breakfast and organizing transportation for the border crossing. Turns out that other people were right, there is really not much available here. Vegetables are limited to half-rotten carrots, pumpkin and decent cucumber or courgettes, and fruits are rare. Thinking of a meal and then buying it doesn't work. You have to see what's available and then make a meal of it. We ended up with a decent tortellini with tomato-olive-sauce dish.

    We headed out early to find out prices for the border crossing. The way from here to El Chaltén consists of first taking a boat to cross a lake. Afterwards there is a 22km hike in which you pass the Chilean border office in the beginning and the Argentinean one in the end. You then arrive to the next lake where you can either again take a boat or hike around. From the other side of the second lake you can hitchhike or take the bus to El Chaltén.

    Us being undecided as always, by the time we had finally decided on how we wanted to do the crossing, the first tour operator did not have space for us anymore on Wednesday. Luckily there is a second one in town and we could reserve our spots here. However, the weather is unpredictable here and because of strong winds the first lake can be unpassable by boat on Wednesday. So we have to keep our fingers crossed.

    The rest of the day we enjoyed the very cosy hostel, updated some footprints and enjoyed the company and stories of some other travellers.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    Finnish sauna in Villa O'Higgins

    November 26, 2019 in Chile ⋅ ☁️ 5 °C

    Knowing that the weather would suck, we didn't plan on doing much the whole day. Since we had the time, we made some nice pancakes for lunch (which were so many we ended up eating them for dinner as well 😊). In the afternoon the sky cleared up a bit so Machiel and Susanne did a very small hike to a nearby viewpoint over the valley and town (which made it clear the airstrip is longer than the town itself) while Daniel enjoyed a true resting day. Back from the hike a great Finnish sauna was waiting for us. It was a great experience to relax outside after the sauna surrounded by snowy mountains.Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    11

    Hiking across the Argentinian border

    November 27, 2019 in Argentina ⋅ ⛅ 7 °C

    Our loyal readers will remember our footprint 'Reaching the end of Carretera Austral' where we mentioned how our undecidedness for booking the border crossing caused the first tour operator to run out of places for us. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise when on Wednesday morning we left the hostel to walk to our tour operator who would bring us to the harbour. Turned out that the other tour operator's boat was broken so it wouldn't run that day. Having gotten to know a lot of people in the hostel who booked tickets with that operator, we left with mixed feelings as we felt a bit bad for those that waited long (some longer than us) to leave Chile and now had to wait even longer. But that's how it can go in Patagonia and we were happy we were lucky enough that it was all going according to plan for us that day.

    The boat ride across Lago O'Higgins-San Martín was bumpy but the views were great. We were accompanied by a Swiss family of 6, 4 bikers, and a German mother and daughter. It was interesting to hear other's travel stories. One of the bikers was cycling the American continent from north to south, another cycled here from Florida. Earlier in the hostel we also met an American who was hiking from El Chaltén to Coyhaique. These kind of stories are just fascinating to listen to and underline that our trip isn't in any way impressive.

    Arriving on the other side of the lake, we asked the only inhabitant of the, let's call it settlement, to bring our heavy backpacks to the border, 15km away. That part was a gravel road that was also easy to walk. But before we went there we had to go the Chilean border control. After waiting a long time in line, it was our turn to watch how a guy slowly typed our passport information into an Excel file before copying it again to another system. We got our stamps! And off we went. It was a bit uphill but a nice walk with great views. After 5 hours we reached the Argentinian border, which was just a few signs in the middle of nowhere. It was 17:30 and we contemplated camping there or hiking another 7km to the harbour of our next day boat ride, where also the Argentinian border control was located. We decided to hike on, having heard stories about difficult river crossings and muddy paths. Those turned out to be true, and we were lucky we only ended with one wet foot and not an entirely wet Daniel and backpack. After a tough 2,5 hour hike down we only reached the campsite right before sunset. This meant that we had to cook and eat in the dark and with it getting very cold this was quite a challenge and our bodies felt quite frozen when finally entering our sleeping bags at 23:00. The bikers reached the campsite some hours earlier, so we were a bit jealous of that. Nonetheless the great view and simply the idea of hiking for so many hours without being officially in any country, was a great experience and totally worth it.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    Snow!

    Snow rain and hot chocolate

    November 28, 2019 in Argentina ⋅ ☁️ 6 °C

    After a pretty cold night we woke up to a cloudy day. Susanne wasn't warm enough during the night, due to the strenuous day before and especially cold late evening. We had to catch the boat at 11:00 right in front of the campsite. While that sounds easy enough, we're always up for a challenge. Helped by some hail and rain, the packing wasn't ideal with us having to pack our inner tents separately from the outer tents, and we really had to hurry to make it. When at 11:00 we ran to the boat, the boat crew instead went to the Argentinian border office to have a tea. It's better to be early than late, we suppose.

    But the boat across Lago del Desierto was brilliant. Most of the people that hiked/biked the border crossing the day before were also there and it was nice to share the experience. Even better: the rain turned into snow 🌨️ and we got some hot chocolate from the crew 😊. The skipper was also the bus driver for the last stretch to El Chaltén, and he was so kind to immediately let us put our backpacks in the bus while we walked around a bit and had a tea in the lake café, which had 1 heater which was constantly swarmed by groups of cold people with wet clothes.

    The bus ride to El Chaltén felt short because we napped for a part of it. Upon arrival at the hostel in the town the rain had finally stopped and because it was supposed to stay dry for a while, we decided to put our tents up again in the backyard.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    3

    El Chaltén

    November 29, 2019 in Argentina ⋅ ⛅ 6 °C

    In the morning we went to the bus station at the other side of the town to pick up Franzi. The rest of the day we spent preparing a 3 day hiking trip in the area. Machiel's air mattress had partially deflated throughout the night, so we also checked in the few outdoor shops in the town to ask if they could help with that. Sadly none of them had a bathtub, and neither did our hostel. The grocery shops were out of stock on some of the stuff we needed, like oat flakes, so we ended up walking the town 3 times to cross off everything on our shopping list. On the way Daniels sunglasses got run over by a bus, and after splitting up in groups to be more efficient, we all found oat flakes and returned with 2.6kg. Back at our tents, we used a garden hose to find the leak in the mattress, and Susanne ended up actually finding it, which was somewhat of a miracle. As a reward, we had dinner at the best vegan restaurant in town to stock up on vitamines for the next few days. They had an interesting way of serving the food.Read more

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    11

    On the way to Fitz Roy

    November 30, 2019 in Argentina ⋅ ⛅ 5 °C

    Packing for a multi-day hiking trip is always a challenge. What's the minimum we need of everything? How much kilograms of oat flakes, or pasta? How many fruits and vegetables do we want to carry? We were helped by the kind hostel owner who let us store some of our stuff that we didn't need in a locker. Regardless, our backpacks were almost completely filled with clothes, cooking stuff, and food. Franzi picked up some vegan lunch packages which we ordered at the nice restaurant the night before.

    We set off around noon for the first stretch of 8,8km. On the way we walked by Laguna Capri with a beautiful view of the iconic ridge-line of Cerro Fitz Roy and its satellite peaks. No matter how often we had already seen it, at every new viewpoint it was again just as cool to look at these massive vertical peaks, the red, grey and dark colors of the rock and the snow and ice on their not too steep parts. After enjoying a lunch with a view on a river delta, we ultimately arrived at our campsite for the night at Poincenot. It was a free campsite in a forest not far from the viewpoint we planned on hiking to the next morning. Funnily enough we met lots of people from O'Higgins during the hike including the Swiss family of 6 who planned on doing the same 3-day hike as we. We arrived at 16:00, set up our tent and made a simple cheese-spaghetti dinner that got very stuck in our pot. Even though it was still early, it was already getting quite cold and we were happy to enter our warm sleeping bags.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    21

    Climbing Fitz Roy (almost)

    December 1, 2019 in Argentina ⋅ ☁️ 9 °C

    At 4:15 our alarms went off. The Swiss dad had told us that sunrise was going to be at 5:45, so naturally we trusted that. It was pitch black in the forest, and very cold. At 4:45 we finally had all our layers on to fight that, including rain pants even though no rain was predicted. Carrying not much more than water, bread, and some muesli bars, we set off with our headlamps on, crossed the river delta next to the campsite, and started climbing. The goal was to see Fitz Roy turn red at sunrise, but sadly the sky seemed almost completely covered by clouds. Not having lost all hope, we hiked on. It was just a bit more than 2km to Laguna De Los Tres but the 450m elevation gain made it a steep 1,5 hour hike. On the bright side that meant we weren't feeling cold for very long, and had to take off our rain pants and several layers of jackets.

    Even though we did not arrive at sunrise and there was no sun anyways, the views up there were amazing. The peaks of Fitz Roy (3405m) and his siblings look mighty even without sunlight hitting them, and it's crazy to realize 2 guys traversed all these peaks in 5 days. We briefly considered repeating that feat but then decided against it because we probably hadn't brought enough muesli bars. Maybe next time.

    We had our deserved breakfast watching over the frozen Laguna De Los Tres with the mountain peaks in front and the valley behind us. The difficulty was staying warm up there, as some of our layers were soaked from sweat and had to be taken off or replaced by dry clothes where possible. We climbed around a bit to regain some heat, and to have a look at the very blue Laguna Sucia. We didn't get tired of the views, but had to return to the campsite again before noon as afterwards we still had to reach our next campsite. The hike down wasn't as demanding in terms of energy but definitely more demanding for our knees.

    Returning to our campsite we had a quick brunch of warm oat meal with milk powder, before packing our tents and gear. In the meantime a Japanese group sat down next to us eating whole plates of sushi. Being all packed again we started the 10,5km hike to campsite D'Agostini at Laguna Torre. Being already quite tired, we were happy the trail was rather easy. Arriving at the campsite we set up our tents and cooked some radioactive mac & cheese. Then we had a quick view of Laguna Torre and the reason why it's there: one of the more than 300 glaciers of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. The next morning we planned to try another sunrise tour.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler
    1
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    Glacier view and actual sunrise!

    December 2, 2019 in Argentina ⋅ ☁️ 9 °C

    This time our alarms went off a little bit later, as we didn't need to hike 1,5 hours to reach our sunrise viewpoint. At 5:40 we were ready and waiting at Laguna Torre with a view on the glacier and Cerro Torre. This time there actually was a sunrise! Once the sun hit the glacier, the wind picked up a lot and we were still pretty cold for awhile. Some other people literally brought their sleeping bag to the viewpoint to stay warm. But when the sun really broke through we also made ourselves a nice oat meal breakfast. Even though significantly smaller than Fitz Roy, Cerró Torre and its surrounding landscape are almost as impressive.

    While Machiel kindly brought back our breakfast gear to the camp and rested his feet, the rest went on to Mirador Maestri, a viewpoint of glacier. We really enjoyed this impressive mass of ice, the different looks of it but especially the icebergs that seemed to zickzack through a part of it. The weather was amazing but we didn't really get used to the strong sun that roasted one side of our bodies while the strong winds from the glacier froze the other. Back at the campsite, we had to slowly say goodbye to this amazing landscape and hike back the 9km to El Chaltén. Thanks to the dominance of the mountain range we could enjoy nice views a lot whenever looking back. Back in El Chaltén we took our reserved beds at our known hostel Casa Azul.    Read more

  • Susanne and MachielHalf around the world and backTraveler

    The great shower experience

    December 3, 2019 in Argentina ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C

    We had decided to take a rest day for our feet and to do research on El Calafate, our next destination. With no alarm but woken up when our French roommates were leaving around 9, we had a relaxed breakfast, checked up on our blog and finances and decided to leave to El Calafate the next morning. Since the weather was nice we had lunch outside at a bakery and enjoyed their WiFi for a bit to research and discuss our upcoming plans. Thinking of our tired muscles we certainly felt like we deserved another sauna. It just so happens that there was a spa with a dry sauna in town that was fairly cheap and offered great views of our beloved Fitz Roy. It didn't have an outdoor resting area like we were used to but their facilities were otherwise good. Afterwards, as we secretly already hoped for, we had the best shower experience in a month. It had a fairly consistent temperature with good pressure, which is hard to find anywhere here otherwise. We cooked a quick pasta and tried to sleep early, as the morning after we had an early bus to catch that would take us to El Calafate.Read more

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