We arrived in La Serena mid afternoon following a scenic bus journey six hours north from Santiago along the coast. La Serena is Chile’s second oldest town, built as connection town between Chile and Peru. As a northern coastal town it draws a lot of people in the summer, but is also where a lot of the miners and vineyard workers live from the local valleys. That afternoon we had a few hours free, so went to a “coffee with legs” place. Santiago has many of these places, a concept born in the eighties to make drinking coffee more popular. They are coffee bars with blacked out windows with scantily dressed waitresses. We had meant to check one out in Santiago were they have some pretty well established chains, but they had not been open at Christmas. The one we went to in La Serena was much more like a brothel with coffee definitely being the second thing on the agenda. Tony the only chap in our group had been to one in Santiago and said the places were like chalk and cheese, and the standard of “waitresses” in La Serena definitely quite a bit lower! We drank our very average cappuccinos quickly and got out pretty quick!

After an early supper in one of the fish restaurants on the market plaza we headed out to an observatory up in the mountains. The northern mountain area of Chile is renowned for its amazingly clear skies and has the most powerful telescopes in the world for astronomic research (all though the telescopes are actually owned by the EU, and the states.) We were just at a tourist observatory, and were lucky in one respect with a nearly full moon and cloudless sky, but the same very bright moon then limited the stars we could see. We got to see through the telescope Jupiter, the moon and a nebula (were stars are formed). We were also able to take photos of the moon with our cameras through the telescope. They informed us about the Inca’s interpretation of the stars and how they were used to decide when to plant and harvest. All in all really interesting and I’ve never seen any stars or planets through telescope before so another first!

Our second day in La Serena we took a tour to the Elqui Valley, which is the main area Pisco grapes are grown and Pisco is distilled. Pisco is a spirit made from distilling grapes, but tastes nothing like wine. Two of the most popular ways to drink Pisco is either in a Pisco Sour, a cocktail made with sugar, lemon and egg white or Piscola (just with coke). There is an argument between Peru and Chile as to which country really invented Pisco, but the general consensus is Peru! We stopped at a couple of small villages, a vin yard, a huge Pisco cooperative and had lunch at a restaurant which cooked all its food in outdoor solar boxes. It’s a beautiful valley which is lush and green, and then abruptly stops at certain level leaving an arid mountain scape. Two of us bought some decent Pisco, and our plan was when we got back to the hotel was to have a siesta between 7-9pm and then regroup for some drinks and maybe hit the town. The following morning there was vague pretence from a few of us that we came out of rooms to meet everyone but everyone else was asleep. Infact all of us were totally shattered and slept straight through to the following morning, all very rock n roll!

Saturday we had a free day with a late start to get some things done before we headed north into the Atacama desert. A few of us hit the hairdressers, odd items purchased etc. One girl unfortunately had her camera pick pocketed, which was not great of course, but luckily it happened in La Serena and not any further north and she was able to buy a decent replacement. We then took a seventeen hour night bus north to the small town of San Pedro de Atacama arriving at ten the following morning.

Once merely a stop on the Andean cattle drive, San Pedro de Atacama (2440 metres) is now a small adobe town crammed with hostels, hotels, pricey restaurants, cafes and a zillion tour operators! The surrounding desert area is full of options from Horseriding, mountain biking, trekking and sand boarding. We all went sand boarding in death valley on our first afternoon, and it was AWESOME DUDES! I say that, and yes the sand boarding itself was great, but walking up the sand dunes to the top was an absolute killer in 30+ degrees! The landscape made up for it, and considering it was a first for us all think we did pretty good. We collectively agreed that we don’t particularly enjoy the taste of sand though. We then headed to the “Valley of the moons” to watch the sunset with a Pisco Sour. It was beautiful, but we were far from the only ones there….seemed like half the town was on the cliff with us! We picked up some empanadas for dinner and sank a bottle of the Pisco, mixed with soda, lemonade and fresh limes. We all slept well following the night bus, sand boarding and Pisco!

Sunday we hired mountain bikes for a nice easy 20km cycle out to the desert to some salt lakes. It all started off pretty easy until one of our party had a flat! Four of us had cycled off not realising, when we saw our guide and the one girl were no where to be seen we cycled back to find they had successfully changed the tyre and just needed to pump up the new tyre. Fifty minutes later with six of us trying and failing to get the thing inflated we were about to let her walk back to town when another cyclist helped us out with a pump that actually worked and we were back on the road again! We arrived at the lakes, and parked our bikes up at which point I didn’t fully acknowledge a small jagged rock wall, fell and quite badly scraped my leg leaving a nice raw area bleeding. Perfect for getting into 40% salt concentrated water!! owwwwwwwwww!!! The lake was very cool, and it was hilarious trying to swim breast stroke as your feet would keep being floated above the water as you tried to kick, which made for some fairly ungraceful swimming! With my leg stinging just a tad I didn’t stay in for too long. The cycle back in the full heat of the day was really hard work, and seemed twice as far. And the poor girl who’d had a flat on the way got another on the way back two km shy from town!! Luckily we had time for a siesta that evening before heading out for a great dinner and a few bottles of wine in preparation of the following three days desert crossing in 4×4 and some serious altitude!

I arrived in Santiago on Friday 21st December after taking a flight from Punta Arenas and checked into a very swish boutique hostel in the cool area of Bellavista. Biggest bunk beds ever, crisp linen, private bathrooms for the dorms, very modern kitchen and lounge area with flat screen. Complete with a roof top terrace which overlooked the San Cristobel hill, Patio Bellavista and the snow capped Andes in the distance. It was such a contrast to the remote mountains I’d been in less then thirty hours before! I had three nights at this hostel before I joined a tour which started on Christmas Eve, that first night I went for a few drinks locally with a group from the hostel trying out the local Pisco sours and woke with a mild hangover on Saturday morning. Spent the weekend not doing an awful lot, the city is the most westernised place I’ve been in four months. It’s very safe, well ordered and clean, whilst maybe not the most exciting place I’ve been, for a few days it was very relaxing for me. The metro system is excellent, cheap, quick, and so easy to use. I headed out to the Costanera centre shopping centre, biggest shopping mall in South America. The German girl I’d met in Pucòn had advised me on a place to get a pedicure there, which after all the hiking I really “needed”. Complete with hot wax footbath, pretty impressive place! The shopping mall was a little overwhelming, particularly being the day before Christmas Eve it was heaving! On seven floors, complete with a huge snow dome with Santa and fake snow, and minstrels wandering the floors playing Christmas music….all quite surreal and I still wasn’t feeling the festive vibe!

There were a lot of Brazilians in my hostel and it was pretty fun trying to communicate in a mix of my poor Spanish, English and Portuguese. Some words are exactly the same, but the accent is so different! A Chilean local fast food is the Completo, which is essentially a hot dog. But with a multitude of toppings, most popular being avocado. It’s a very cheap meal and really tasty, but I could easily get into a one a day habit if not careful! Another Chilean food specially best shared and eaten after a hangover is Chorillana a plate of chips, with shredded beef, chicken, onions and topped with fried eggs! On the healthier side is the Ceviche, raw fish cooked/seared
in lemon juice with onion, coriander and peppers. It’s the best!

On Christmas Eve, I spent the morning doing a little bit of sight seeing, I would have done more but Monday all museums are shut! I took the free bus up the San Cristobel hill for some panoramic views of the city. At the top is a statue of Mary with a small church. I then wandered down the hill, which I don’t think should have taken too long but somehow got a bit lost on a very disused track, and didn’t see anyone for half an hour. Hiking down a hill in flip flops, with no water on a hot day not my best idea, I came across a couple of the park workmen who put me back on the right track. I then walked round a couple of the other neighbourhoods, finishing at the Mercado central fish market and was accosted by every restaurant for my business, I had a decent ceviche and then headed back through the throngs of last minute shoppers to my hostel. The traffic was all of a sudden pretty mental in town as people were leaving work early to get home for Christmas Eve which is the main celebration here. I had planned to grab a taxi to transfer to the hotel which was my tour starting point but realised the Metro would be much quicker and cheaper!

I think normally going from a hostel to a hotel your going to expect an upgrade, but having left the H Rado super modern new hostel for my very dated small pokey hotel it did not feel like this, but it was totally fine. I’d booked this tour before I left the UK, partly to ensure I was with a group for Christmas and New Year, and the tour itinerary was great. But having travelled on my own now for two months, I had slightly started to regret the tour as I felt more then capable of doing all of this solo. I’d also found out only five of us were on the tour and was thinking it might all be a bit of a disaster. When I checked in there was a sign for our group to meet at seven and bring something for dinner to share. As after six pm literally everything in the city shut we would not have been able to eat anywhere out our tour guide had persuaded the hotel to cook dinner for us all. So we all met at seven with a bottle of something and went through the tour info and got to know each other a bit. It’s a great mix with no one from the same country, four girls and one young chap from Melbourne. I am the oldest but don’t feel it, and our guide Nancy from Peru is great. She had bought us all Santa Hats which she’d decorated in glitter with the companies “G”logo, which helped the festive spirits. Dinner was average, but I appreciated the sentiment of plain turkey with potato croquette balls! We finished off two bottles of Cava, couple of reds and a bottle of Pisco, waited till midnight to wish each other a happy Christmas and hit the sack.

So Christmas Day on the itinerary of our tour was a free day with a few options like a wine tour, but everything was shut so we took a bus to the coast to Valparaiso and and Vina del Mar. As had the Ozzie guy I’d been to Valparaiso before, and both done the walking tour, so between us we did half of the tour and told the group what info we could remember. It was so quiet wondering around the streets, Christmas Day is a very quiet day with most people staying in bed till gone midday following Xmas eve festivities. It’s a great town, and I was very happy to return. We then took a twenty minute bus up the coast to the beach resort town of Vina del Mar which is such a contrast to the steep hills covered in colourful houses of Valparaiso. But it had a beach! So Christmas Day lunch was fried hake with Chilean tomato salad sunbathing on the beach followed by churros, I can’t complain. A few of us braved the Pacific Ocean for about ninety seconds, it was freezing and very rough but worth it! We took an early evening bus back to Santiago, and in the evening restaurants had started to open again so we went for a nice dinner and I had great a great ceviche, everyone was shattered and we were leaving in the morning early so not a late night.

So I’m now on a bus heading six hours up the coast to La Serena, and will be with the tour till 11th January ending in La Paz. It’s quite nice not having to plan and book everything for the next two weeks, and some of the places I’m going to and some of the things I’m hopefully going to do are going to be amazing!!!

Following a six hour stinky bus road from El Calafate (no water in the whole town), and a very easy boarder crossing into Chile arrived in Puerto Natales and checked into a great hostel. With duvets, not sheets and blankets…so nice!! “The Singing Lamb”, this season mainly run by two really lovely guys from the states, super helpful and friendly. The staff can make such a difference to hostels, and these guys certainly did! Had a much needed shower and headed into the small town to get organised for my trek.

Puerto Natales is a destination for two reasons, it’s the end or start destination of the Navimag boat trip that goes to & from Puerto Montt through the Chilean Fords. And it’s also the closest town to the Torres del Paine national park that is a massive must for trekking travellers. I don’t really consider myself a trekker, and originally planned just to visit the park for a day. But after reading up a bit, meeting a lot of people who’d completed the “W trek” I decided I should do it. Due to my timeframe of having to be in Santiago by the 22nd I only had a few days for the trek, and I was doing it alone wanted to make it as easy as possible so had booked into refugios, and took full board versus camping and carrying all my stuff. I had a day and half in Natales before I left for the park to get organised, (only actually involved borrowing some poles, packing a small bag and attending a chat/brief about the trek). But it was nice to have the time in the town and found a couple of decent eateries, including one place in particular. Had a whole King crab for the first time in my life, bit pricey but worth it. I also met up with the Dutch motorcycling couple again for a pizza, I won’t see them again as we take very different routes, but it was really nice to see them again.

So the park and the W the trek:

Day 1, arrived in park midday. Walked with a German chap (goat!!!), about 15km, 6 hours. Started in very warm sun, and headed up into clouds. We climbed the final slightly difficult ascent to “Torres” and were lucky enough that the clouds moved and we saw them! I have to say I felt slightly fraudulent with my 30 litre day pack when I was watching people walking past with 70+litres for camping etc, but I was very happy too. Seeing people looking miserable because they are carrying loads does not make me want to do it!! First night Refugio was pretty decent. I had made a bit of a cock-up, having booked my Refugios and food online with an agent, and paid in US dollars, I had read but not taken full heed of the fact that I needed my passport and tourist paper from boarder control. This was important as I had paid less 19% by paying in US$, but without the passport and paper to present at the Refugios then charged me the 19% extra in cash! And I hadn’t bought my credit card, or much cash thinking I’d paid for everything up front. So that first night I had to shell out some extra $, leaving me with nearly nothing.

Day 2, easy day. 14 km, 4 hours, walked solo. It had lashed it down all night and I was dreading going out in the rain, but it had pretty much stopped, and aside from grey skies and clouded hiding the mountains I was walking underneath it was really lovely walk. Advantages to hiking alone: walk at your own pace, stop when you want for water, snack, photo or wee. You can talk yourself out loud and no one is there to tell you that you’re a bit weird. And you can break wind freely. I got the second Refugio at 2, shoes soaked through, pleaded ignorance on the 19% and said I didn’t have the money, which I didn’t so he let me in. I had a shower and settled down to catch up on some reading on my Kindle only to realise I left it at the other Refugio…..needles to say on radioing through it had not been found. I then also manage to burn my arm quite badly on a wood stove pipe hanging stuff up to dry. I really could have done with a glass of something….but didn’t have the cash! Doh, doh, doh!!!! Stooooopid, forgetful, clumsy self!!!!!

Day 3, the killer! 29 km – 9 hours. Again it had totally lashed it down all night, and all though the skies were trying to brighten in the morning as I set off and it was quite beautiful with the mist rising from the lake and mountain bases, I was soaked from walking through the bushes and half the trails were water logged so my shoes were sodden after two minutes. I had set off early on my own knowing the length of the days trek, but after half an hour a guy from Buenos Aires caught up with me and made me walk with him. It was good as again had a whole day of only speaking Spanish, but also he really pushed the pace and I think if I was on my own I would only have gone to the first view point up the valley we hiked to, as opposed to the whole way up and back. I found out after a few hours he was a sports teacher, hence the relentless pace! Again the clouds really limited what we saw, but the hike was really varied with forests, rivers and boulder scrambles. Arrived to the final Refugio at five, and the guy let me off with the promise I’d email him my passport and paperwork the following night which I did!

Day 4- 22km, 8 hours. I hiked alone on the final day as I set off earliest. First thing in the morning it was nearly clear blue skies so I grabbed my camera for breakfast and got a couple of shots of the mountains I’d been walking under the last few days. Really glad I did as twenty minutes later the clouds blew on a strong wind and covered them! One of the things I’d been told to expect in the park was the really changeable weather, and in particular strong winds. Up untill the last day I’d not experienced any wind, the final day threw everything at me. Wind, rain, snow, sun….actually it was pretty cool. At times I could stand up and try and fall forward only to have the wind hold me up, I was really glad of the poles on this day as they really helped keep you moving, and also slow you down when you needed to. The hike was up to a large lake and a glacier, unfortunately the clouds yet again did not play fair, and when I was nearest the glacier couldn’t see to much! I also again bumped into the British couple who were doing it properly and camping…..just looked a bit too much like hard work for me! The final hour back my feet were throbbing….but I had no blisters, so very thankful. I took the catamaran back across the lake to the bus, and had some of the best views of the mountains of the trip! Arrived back into Natales to the hostel at ten pm, and one of the American lads had picked me up a crab pie “Pastel De Jaiba” from a local restaurant for my dinner! Delicious but so naughty…crab, cream, cheese and bread…..but I think I had earned it! (All though my jeans still say otherwise!!!).

I’m really pleased with myself for doing this trek, and even though I made it as easy as possible for myself, I’ve never walked anything like these distances. I don’t know if I am a full on hiker yet, there’s something about the clothes that just aren’t that appealing, but I think I’ll make an effort to keep it up whilst travelling as its the only exercise I’ve had and will get! And the scenery and nature is cool!

One other note, my brother gave me a merino wool base layer as a present before my travels claiming he wears the same type for a weeks snowboarding and it never smells. Well I wore it for all four days, and I’m not saying it smelt of spring flowers at the end, but it was amazing how it don’t stink and I had seriously sweated!!! Thank you J!

That was my final stop in Patagonia, and the south. It had been wet, wild, challenging but most of all beautiful!…..despite the freakin clouds……and for the things I missed because of the weather there’s always google images!!!