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The South American Odyssey
  • The Craze for Travelling
  • The Craze for Travelling

The South American Odyssey

A 147-day adventure by The Craze for Travelling Read more
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  • The Craze for TravellingThe South American OdysseyThe Craze for Travelling
    Cascada La Nutria
    Cascada La Nutria2Across the bouldersGlacial lakeSeries of moraines

    Off for the glacier walk

    January 19, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    We were up early, loaded our bags in the pickup and checked out. We parked at the pickup point of our glacier walk tour anf moved the bags inside of our vehicle. After that, we were off in the tour van towards the Exploradores glacier. The route was very scenic. We stopped at Cascada La Nutria on the way.
    We started the trek around 10 am. The initial path was through thick forest. After trekking for about 20 min, we came to a place where there were a lot of boulders. We had to jump between the boulders to move along. After the boulders, came the moraine of the glacier. There were a series of moraines formed by the retreating glacier. We had to trek up and then down each one of them till we came across a glacial lake. This lake forms the starting point of for the walk on the ice.    Read more

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    2

    Over the stone covered glacier

    January 19, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    The path further past the moraines was over ice but the ice was totally covered with stones and organic matter so we continued our walk with the normal shoes for another 15-20 min till we reached a place where the ice started appearing between the stones. Here we sat and put on our cramp ons.Read more

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    The true glacier walk

    January 19, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    A bit further in our walk, we could see stones that had sunk into the glacier ice and the fresh clear ice had formed around them to give a very beautiful spectacle. There were deep cracks where water had frozen on the surface into a clear layer and the water below looked deep blue. By now, there were hardly any stones on the glacier and we were walking on pure glacial ice from millions of years ago.Read more

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    Tunnel of ice

    January 19, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 29 °C

    We came across a small tunnel of ice. There was a deep hole on one side where the water was swirling down into the depths while on the other side the path continued onto the ice back up to the glacier. A few of us jumped into the tunnel and came up the other side. It was a fabulous experience.Read more

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    Back to Rio Tranquilo and off North

    January 19, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    We returned from the glacier, removed our gaiters and cramp ons before continuing back on the path over the boulders and the forest back to the starting point of the trek. Here our van was waiting to take us back to Puerto Rio Tranquilo. On the way, we had to stop and wait for almost 2 hours for some road work going on in the National Park.
    We reached Puerto Rio Tranquilo quite late in the evening because of the delay. Here, we had our food and were off heading North with no booking for the night. The paln was to find some cabaña on the way and stay there overnight. We wanted to do the Cerro Castillo trek the next day so we wanted to be as near as possible to Villa Cerro Castillo (the nearest village). Here again we gave a ride to 4 people from Germany but we weren't sure how far we would go since we told them we would stop at the first cabaña we saw after dark. We drove very slowly in the lower gears with the 4x4 setting over the slippery gravel road. Despite that, the vehicle continued to roll and pitch at every turn over 40 kms per hour. Our hitch hikers had changed vehicles by now and gone with another coming from behind going all the way to Villa Cerro Castillo. Around 12 pm, I felt extremely tired and we hadn't found any place to stay. Hristo took over the driving and we continued North. I slept a while in the back seat. Eventually, we reached Villa Cerro Castillo. There we parked the vehicle. I stayed in it while the rest 3 went around to find a place to stay. Despite having woken up a few cabaña owners, they didn't find anything available. There had been extremely strong winds in Cerro Castillo the previous day and the rangers had to go in to evacuate the hills. A lot of these people were now in Villa Cerro Castillo. We tried calling some other places we found on Maps.me but none was available. We drove around 10 kms up North towards Puerto Ibáñez and stopped at every cabaña sign and woke up the owners but found nothing available.
    Eventually, we found cabaña sign at La Casona hostel and restaurant marked on Maps.me. It was totally dark there. Melinda and Hristo went to check it. After knocking and tapping for 5 min, there was still no response. That's when Melinda heard snoring from inside so she was sure there was someone inside and started knocking harder and louder. Eventually, the lady running the place woke up and surprise... surprise... She had rooms for 4 available 😁
    What a relief that was!! We eventually got a place to sleep at around 1:30 am and we slept like babies after that.    Read more

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    La Casona villa
    La Casona villaCerro Castillo clear of clouds mostlyCabañas behind the villaThe lovely garden2Entrance to the villa

    La Casona

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    We woke up around 10 am the next morning feeling quite refreshed. We wanted to start the trek of Cerro Castillo before 12 pm when we had heard they stop the entries for the day. It was a lovely sunny morning with hardly a cloud in the sky. We could see tge granite peaks of Cerro Castillo, which boaded well for our trek plans. La Casona where we had been very lucky to find a place the previous night was a lovely cozy place in a very scenic location. It was a beautiful wooden villa run by a single lady. She had some cabañas and was also running a restaurant there.
    We had paid 20000 CLP per person for one night, making it a total of 80000 CLP which was double than what we had paid in most places but then we didn't have a choice the previous night and we had been very lucky to find this place. The breakfast was included so we didn't have to go anywhere else to find food before the trek. It was during breakfast that we found that they had cabañas as well and were costing 45000 CLP for the 4 of us. It was a nice cozy cottage within the same compound and as we were expecting to come back exhausted after a day long trek, we decided to stay one more night there but moved to the cabaña.    Read more

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    Start of the Cerro Castillo trek

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    Maria decided to skip the trek as she wanted to relax a bit and the La Casona was the perfect place for it. She dropped us off at the base of Cerro Castillo where the trek starts and went back to the villa. It was almost 12 pm when we started the trek. The day was a clear one with hardly any wind. There was a small cloud floating just below the mountain peaks which we hoped wouldn't be there when we reached the top. Overall, an ideal day for a steep mountain trek.Read more

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    Cascada Del Rey

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ 🌬 19 °C

    There were several deviations on the main route up. We decided to go to the side path to Cascada Del Rey which was a short 2 km deviation from the main route. Hardly anybody else was going on this track and it wasn't even marked on Maps.me so we weren't sure if was worth going 2 kms to it but we decided to check it out. It was a beautiful waterfall with ice cold water coming from the melting snows above. We stopped for a while and filled our water bottles before heading on.Read more

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    Back on the main trail

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ 🌬 20 °C

    From the waterfall, Maps.me didn't show any trail joining the main trail so we would need to walk back 2 kms and then continue on the main trail. But, from where we were, a section of the main trail showed to be about 700 mts away. There was a sort of a trail or clearing among the thick grasses that lead in that direction so we decided to try and reach the main trail this way. The path was quite steep and tricky at some places and there were a lot of bushes with thorns and seeds that stuck to the pants. After walking for about 20 min, we reached the main trail. We had climbed quite high pretty quickly. The views were stunning. We could see the valley and the hills behind us. On the other side we could see the upper section of the stream forming more waterfalls. There were many tree trunks broken in strange formations. We could really figure out why they were like that. The most probable guess was fire burning the trees and the broken remains after that.Read more

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    The steep climb up

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    On the main trail, the track continued going up at a steady rate. The valley behind was spectacular. We could see for miles around. To the right were ts snow covered peaks with the Rio Ibáñez snaking its way into the valley. In the middle was the small village of Villa Cerro Castillo and mountains in multiple steps of plateaus behind. In some of the flat places, there were lakes. On the left side was the valley leading to the Puerto Ibáñez with the Rio Ibáñez continuing till the General Carrera lake.Read more

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    Ridges near the top

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ 🌬 17 °C

    As we continued to climb the views got more and more amazing. We could see further and further away. It was a panoramic view of the valleys around. The last stretch of the climb was among stones and rocks and quite slippery. The track till this place had been a thick layer of sand and dust and with each step a cloud of dust would fly around and it was hard to walk less than 15 mts behind each other. But once the rocks started, the dust wasn't the main problem, the grip was. We reached a ridge very near the peaks around 3:30 pm, almost 3 hours after we started. This wasn't the final ridge. We couldn't even see the lake below. Then it was a slight climb to the 2nd ridge. From here, we could see a bit of the Laguna Castillo. There were no clouds around the granite peaks of the Cerro Castillo.Read more

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    Cerro Castillo!!

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ 🌬 18 °C

    What a sight it was!! Around 4 pm, we crossed the last of the ridhes around the Laguna Castillo. It was a mindblowing view. Typical of what one would dream of, in the Patagonia. It was a perfect day with no clouds and hardly any wind. It was nice and sunny and a bit cool at this altitude and the gentle breeze was perfect while we lied down on the rocks admiring and soaking in the view. There was even a rock formation which most Indians would liken to the shape of Brahma 😁 of course, here no one knows about that 😉Read more

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    The trek back

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 16 °C

    After enjoying the view for almost 2 hours, we started our trek back at 6 pm. The views of the valley were even more mesmerizing in the evening sun. We reached the final flat part of the trail in 1 hour only. Here some of the places, the track was so eroded that the dust track was almost a meter below the ground level.Read more

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    Insects on the Calafate berries

    Calafate berries

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ 🌬 19 °C

    About a km from the end of the trail, Hristo sent a message to Maria to come and pick us. We were quite hungry by now since we had not carried any food with us. Melinda was so hungry, she could eat one of us if she didn't get food quickly 🤤🤤🤤
    Luckily, there were many Calafate bushes with quite ripe Calafate berries. We gorged ourselves on the tasty berries and got blue in our mouth, teeth and tongue. But was all worth because they were very tasty 😁😁 Some were so ripe they were coverd with ladybird kind of insects 3-4 on each berry.    Read more

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    A fantastic dinner

    January 20, 2018 in Chile ⋅ 🌙 17 °C

    Maria reached the start of the trek just as we were walking out from there. Just near the entrance of the trek is the restaurant Puesto Huemul. We were quite hungry so we decided to habe our dinner there.
    They actually had quite good food. The lemonade was great after a full day in the heat and the vegetarian crepes were quite good as well. We were so tired by the end of the day that Hristo literally fell out of the vehicle whem we reached back 😂😂    Read more

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    Back to Coyhaique

    January 21, 2018 in Chile ⋅ ☀️ 17 °C

    Hristo had remembered wrongly that we needed to return the vehicle by 11 am in Coyhaique, so we woke up early and were off from La Casona by 8 am. It was again a perfect day with no clouds. We reached Coyhaique around 10:00 am and went straight to the petrol pump to refill and return the vehicle. It was at the petrol pump that Hristo realized that we had till 1 pm to return the vehicle. At the petrol pump, Melinda tried using her card again and failed yet again 😁 She tried every possible combination of choosing her card as credit, debit, payments in lumpsum or in installments but the transaction didn't go through. By now, this had become a regular sight for us so we laughing about it but the attendants at the petrol pump got very nervous on what we would do 😁😁😁
    Eventually, Maria paid for the fuel with her card
    Now that we had some time, we drove around outside Coyhaique to find a nice place to have our breakfast. But, nothing was open at this hour, so we drove to the town center and parked there and had our breakfast at our favorite place Chelenko.
    Here we got good wifi and we tried to find a way to get over the border into Argentina since our next destination in the plan was El Chalten in Argentina some 800 kms away.
    We couldn't find a clear answer so we went to the information center to check there. Here too, we didn't get much information. They told us that the only way to cross the border was to go to Puerto Ibáñez (from where we had come in the morning), then take a ferry on the Lago General Carrera to Chile Choco on the border, then cross over and find buses on the other side. They had absolutely no information about the connectivity in the Argentinan side or if there were any buses. In fact, they didn't even have information regarding the buses on the Chile side even 😲 they just told us to go to the bus station to find out about the buses.
    Hristo and Maria went to to the bus station to find out about the buses to Puerto Ibáñez. Here too, they didn't get much information except that the lady at the counter gave them a slip with a number to call for the bus to Puerto Ibáñez. In the meantime, our vehicle was picked up up at the center by the rental company representative. There was no issue so he returned our deposit in cash.
    After that, we gave a call to the number we had got from the bus station only to find out that there was only one bus a day at 8 am and that it was connected to the ferry at Puerto Ibáñez at 11 am. We wanted to book our places for the next day bit they wanted to know where to pick us up. We had not anticipated this so we told them to reserve our places and that we would call later to confirm the pickup place.
    I started looking for a place to stay for one night and found a nice accommodation with a family, quite near the center (Hostel Puesto Patagon). They had quite good ratings on booking.com so we booked it and went with our bags there. It was a nice little place with bunk beds in 2 rooms on the 1st floor while the family lives on the ground floor. The toiltes and baths too were on the ground floor. We took the opportunity to get our laundry done since they had washing machine and were ready to do our laundry for a nominal charge of 3000 CLP per load. We also updated our pickup with the bus company for the next day.    Read more