A short stay in a long country....
Hello to you!
Hope you are well. We're both fine except Lynn is covered in bites again though this time we suspect fleas (not mine before you ask) and she has a cold (which might have been mine).
Apologies for the fact that it's been about 2 weeks since the previous installment of my travelogue. My last update ended with us being in Bariloche in Argentina's lake district which is somewhere in the middle of Argentina vertically and on the left horizontally. Near the mountains - you'll find it. Anyway, it had rained for the last 36 hours and showed no signs of stopping. Well, it did end eventually. After about 5 days of non-stop downpour. The wind was also horrendous - each morning we awoke expecting to find the roof missing.
We stayed in Bariloche for 9 days in the end, delaying our departure by a couple of days as the weather improved and both Lynn and I have agreed that it is our favourite place so far. The town is a bit of a trekking centre and is surrounded by the most beautiful lakes and mountains I've ever seen. Really just so wonderful. On day 8 in Bariloche we hired a car and drove around the area and it was a gloriously sunny, clear day. Windows down, music on, virtually empty roads all the way. In the winter the area around Bariloche turns into Argentina's most popular ski district so many of the mountains have chair-lifts or cable-cars to the tops making it easy to pull over in the car, hop on a chair-lift and 10 minutes later take in the breath-taking views.
We also did a 'Canopy Adventure Tour' which involved getting to the summit of a really steep and wooded hillside in a 4x4 and then zipping down through the trees on wire cables strung between the trees. Some of the wires between tree platforms are quite long (250+ metres) and you get up to a fair speed on these as you hurtle down the hillside tarzan-style (albeit in a silly hat). The adrenalin rush doesn't quite compare to a bungee jump but it was a fun morning's entertainment nonetheless. Atleast for one of us it was. Lynn's assurances that "I'm only scared of heights if I'm not attached" proved to be incorrect as, coming to a halt somewhere between platforms 1 and 2, she decided she'd had enough and wanted back on solid ground. The only problem was she couldn't reach it! In the end she was attached to a rope and towed back along the wire to platform 1. And that was the end of her canopy experience. But, I enjoyed myself!
Even 9 days in Bariloche didn't seem enough but we had to tear ourselves away and press on to new and exciting places....
We caught the bus to Chile - to Puerto Montt to be exact with the plan being to stay the night there and the next day to head south via bus and ferry to the island of Chiloe for a few days. We arrived at Puerto Montt at midday but the weather was so foul and the sky so dark you'd have thought it was midnight. The place looked downright miserable and so depressing that we just couldn't face the prospect of even one night there. I enquired about buses to Chiloe and found that one left in 10 minutes and had only 2 seats left before it was full. So that was our decision made. Chiloe here we come!
We arrived in Castro, the capital 'city' of Chiloe about 4 hours later. It IS a city but size-wise it's really a village. And a rather ramshackle rundown village at that. The houses are all wooden and mostly in an advanced state of disrepair. They are usually painted in clashing bright colours too. The cathedral for example, wooden like every other building here, is painted vivid orange with a bright lilac roof and lilac spires! We found a place to stay in the guidebook that sounded ok and headed there. Hospedaje Mansilla it's name and Jose Mansilla it's owner. Jose Mansilla is a lovely man in his mid-nineties who speaks not a word of English and speaks Spanish in an accent so far removed from any other Spanish on the planet that in the 3 days we stayed there I can confidently state that I never understood a
single word he said. After arriving he introduced us to his wife. I think she was his wife - he sent a flurry of jibberish my direction and pointed at a small, old woman in the corner of the room. I waved, she waved back and from that I deduced that they were married. We shared many interesting and sometimes long conversations where he did all the talking and I did all the nodding, shrugging and smiling.
We didn't do much in Chiloe as there isn't much to do there. It's predominantly farmland and except for the buildings look uncannily like England. It even rains alot to help the illusion that we're back home. We took a bus to a neighbouring village one day and it was exactly like Castro only half the size but this time the church was bright yellow and blue. The reason for us coming here was that Michael Palin came here whilst doing his 'Full Circle' series and it seemed quite picturesque. I guess it is - the fact that the buildings are so close to collapse (or atleast appear to be) makes them far more appealing in a photogenic sense. Many of those at the water's edge actually go out over the water on stilts and make good photos.
After 3 days and feeling in urgent need of civilisation we headed 800 miles north (all by coach, all in one go and all in 18 hours) to Chile's capital, Santiago. Halfway into our journey I discovered I had a lovely farewell present from Chiloe in the form of diarrhoea. Disappointing, but only my first bout in 70 days away so something to celebrate there aswell I think considering how quickly I usually get it! Lynn found a place in the guidebook in Santiago called Hostal Rio Amazonas. It was a little on the expensive side but we had a look at their website and it looked quite good, had a lot of amenities and so we thought we'd give it a try. We arrived at about 09:00 and our 'excellent double with private bathroom and TV' turned
out not to be what we expected. The room had the look of a prison cell. It was the size of a double bed plus half a metre at the bottom of the bed and about 20cm down one side. It had no windows, but one rather small skylight by the door. The door had no proper lock, there were 2 enormous mould spots on the ceiling. Items of furniture consisted of a childsize wardrobe with no door (presumably because if there was then there wouldn't be room to open it) at the bottom of the bed and a minute table completely filled by a portable TV next to it. As for the bathroom - the shower was disgusting. No, I mean DISGUSTING! The hostal advertises itself as having '24 hours hot water' but we only had a cold tap so I guess they mean we have use of the kettle if we want. Worst of all though if you have a runny arse was the discovery that the flush didn't work on the toilet. Under normal circumstances you wouldn't stay here even 1 minute let alone 1 night but I was not really in the mood to be 'picky' and I didn't know about the flush at this stage remember so we said "yeah, looks lovely", closed the door, I crashed out on the bed and stayed there for the remainder of the day. I don't know why we asked the hostal to do our laundry but we did that too. It was 6,000 Chilean pesos (about 7 quid) so quite expensive but we said ok and we were told it would be returned to us in the morning. The next morning Lynn woke up covered in the bites I mentioned at the beginning of the email. Maybe bed bugs but I didn't get any which is why we think she got them from the hostal cat. We got our laundry back the next day but were told that the price was 12,000 pesos because it took 2 loads. 14 quid for some laundry!!! I also 'lost' a pair of good (ie. expensive) walking socks. I know sometimes a sock goes missing in the wash but both socks from the same pair when that pair are the rolls-royce of the sock world is a little dubious in my opinion. So 14 quid for the laundry and I lose a 10 quid pair of socks. I enquire about the socks but just get shrugs and sorry's and don't know's. Well, that's the final straw. I may be shitting through the eye of a needle but I HAVE HAD ENOUGH AND WE ARE GOING SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!
Two hours later we find ourselves in the delightful 'Hotel Londres'. A converted old mansion in a beatuful and recently restored part of Santiago. Our room is beautiful. We have a double bed. Each!!! And the room could easily accomodate another 3 or 4! A window - oh joy of joys - we can now look out on the world from our beds! Big cupboards and a writing table to do our diaries. Also, a nice big bathroom, with a toilet, with a flush! Oh what luxury - I feel better already.
I notice this email has gotten lengthy again. Time to wrap things up, it's 9pm and I'm getting hungry as we haven't eaten yet.
We stay 3 nights in Hotel Londres before leaving Santiago and Chile and heading back east over the border into Argentina to the city of Mendoza which is where we are now. Other things we did in Santiago involve nearly getting caught in a riot inwhich 54 people were arrested and 19 police injured. It was a political march on Bank holiday Monday. A bit like a carnival with all the different parties marching up the roads in a parade waving flags and banners and distributing leaflets - there were left wing groups, right wing groups, atleast half a dozen different communist groups, a naturists group, a small Neo-Nazi group.... I was having a great time
snapping photos as they all went by but it turned a bit ugly, bottles and stones were thrown, riot police came from out of nowhere and we got out of there fast! We also had possibly our greatest culinary experience of the trip when Lynn discovered Santiago's only authentic Indian restaurant. Our first curry in 71 days. Oh, it was truly a magical moment! I have never enjoyed a lamb rogan josht so much in my life!
That's about it from Chile. We didn't like it much. It wasn't awful but Argentina was so much nicer. Chiloe was boring and a few bad experiences in Santiago with the hotel, the riot and the shits mean't we didn't have a great time there either all in all. So we're back in Argentina in the city of Mendoza where we arrived yesterday. Today we spent the day in a health spa just outside the city where there is a natural thermal spring. It was really nice - we had the thermal baths obviously and also a mud bath, a sauna, massage, reflexology, an excellent meal at the resort.... all in all a really good day.
We're here for a couple more days before heading north, probably to a town called La Rioja. Let you know about that when we get there though....
That's it you can wake up now and turn the computer off!
Bye for a bit,
Rich
Hope you are well. We're both fine except Lynn is covered in bites again though this time we suspect fleas (not mine before you ask) and she has a cold (which might have been mine).
Apologies for the fact that it's been about 2 weeks since the previous installment of my travelogue. My last update ended with us being in Bariloche in Argentina's lake district which is somewhere in the middle of Argentina vertically and on the left horizontally. Near the mountains - you'll find it. Anyway, it had rained for the last 36 hours and showed no signs of stopping. Well, it did end eventually. After about 5 days of non-stop downpour. The wind was also horrendous - each morning we awoke expecting to find the roof missing.
We stayed in Bariloche for 9 days in the end, delaying our departure by a couple of days as the weather improved and both Lynn and I have agreed that it is our favourite place so far. The town is a bit of a trekking centre and is surrounded by the most beautiful lakes and mountains I've ever seen. Really just so wonderful. On day 8 in Bariloche we hired a car and drove around the area and it was a gloriously sunny, clear day. Windows down, music on, virtually empty roads all the way. In the winter the area around Bariloche turns into Argentina's most popular ski district so many of the mountains have chair-lifts or cable-cars to the tops making it easy to pull over in the car, hop on a chair-lift and 10 minutes later take in the breath-taking views.
We also did a 'Canopy Adventure Tour' which involved getting to the summit of a really steep and wooded hillside in a 4x4 and then zipping down through the trees on wire cables strung between the trees. Some of the wires between tree platforms are quite long (250+ metres) and you get up to a fair speed on these as you hurtle down the hillside tarzan-style (albeit in a silly hat). The adrenalin rush doesn't quite compare to a bungee jump but it was a fun morning's entertainment nonetheless. Atleast for one of us it was. Lynn's assurances that "I'm only scared of heights if I'm not attached" proved to be incorrect as, coming to a halt somewhere between platforms 1 and 2, she decided she'd had enough and wanted back on solid ground. The only problem was she couldn't reach it! In the end she was attached to a rope and towed back along the wire to platform 1. And that was the end of her canopy experience. But, I enjoyed myself!
Even 9 days in Bariloche didn't seem enough but we had to tear ourselves away and press on to new and exciting places....
We caught the bus to Chile - to Puerto Montt to be exact with the plan being to stay the night there and the next day to head south via bus and ferry to the island of Chiloe for a few days. We arrived at Puerto Montt at midday but the weather was so foul and the sky so dark you'd have thought it was midnight. The place looked downright miserable and so depressing that we just couldn't face the prospect of even one night there. I enquired about buses to Chiloe and found that one left in 10 minutes and had only 2 seats left before it was full. So that was our decision made. Chiloe here we come!
We arrived in Castro, the capital 'city' of Chiloe about 4 hours later. It IS a city but size-wise it's really a village. And a rather ramshackle rundown village at that. The houses are all wooden and mostly in an advanced state of disrepair. They are usually painted in clashing bright colours too. The cathedral for example, wooden like every other building here, is painted vivid orange with a bright lilac roof and lilac spires! We found a place to stay in the guidebook that sounded ok and headed there. Hospedaje Mansilla it's name and Jose Mansilla it's owner. Jose Mansilla is a lovely man in his mid-nineties who speaks not a word of English and speaks Spanish in an accent so far removed from any other Spanish on the planet that in the 3 days we stayed there I can confidently state that I never understood a
single word he said. After arriving he introduced us to his wife. I think she was his wife - he sent a flurry of jibberish my direction and pointed at a small, old woman in the corner of the room. I waved, she waved back and from that I deduced that they were married. We shared many interesting and sometimes long conversations where he did all the talking and I did all the nodding, shrugging and smiling.
We didn't do much in Chiloe as there isn't much to do there. It's predominantly farmland and except for the buildings look uncannily like England. It even rains alot to help the illusion that we're back home. We took a bus to a neighbouring village one day and it was exactly like Castro only half the size but this time the church was bright yellow and blue. The reason for us coming here was that Michael Palin came here whilst doing his 'Full Circle' series and it seemed quite picturesque. I guess it is - the fact that the buildings are so close to collapse (or atleast appear to be) makes them far more appealing in a photogenic sense. Many of those at the water's edge actually go out over the water on stilts and make good photos.
After 3 days and feeling in urgent need of civilisation we headed 800 miles north (all by coach, all in one go and all in 18 hours) to Chile's capital, Santiago. Halfway into our journey I discovered I had a lovely farewell present from Chiloe in the form of diarrhoea. Disappointing, but only my first bout in 70 days away so something to celebrate there aswell I think considering how quickly I usually get it! Lynn found a place in the guidebook in Santiago called Hostal Rio Amazonas. It was a little on the expensive side but we had a look at their website and it looked quite good, had a lot of amenities and so we thought we'd give it a try. We arrived at about 09:00 and our 'excellent double with private bathroom and TV' turned
out not to be what we expected. The room had the look of a prison cell. It was the size of a double bed plus half a metre at the bottom of the bed and about 20cm down one side. It had no windows, but one rather small skylight by the door. The door had no proper lock, there were 2 enormous mould spots on the ceiling. Items of furniture consisted of a childsize wardrobe with no door (presumably because if there was then there wouldn't be room to open it) at the bottom of the bed and a minute table completely filled by a portable TV next to it. As for the bathroom - the shower was disgusting. No, I mean DISGUSTING! The hostal advertises itself as having '24 hours hot water' but we only had a cold tap so I guess they mean we have use of the kettle if we want. Worst of all though if you have a runny arse was the discovery that the flush didn't work on the toilet. Under normal circumstances you wouldn't stay here even 1 minute let alone 1 night but I was not really in the mood to be 'picky' and I didn't know about the flush at this stage remember so we said "yeah, looks lovely", closed the door, I crashed out on the bed and stayed there for the remainder of the day. I don't know why we asked the hostal to do our laundry but we did that too. It was 6,000 Chilean pesos (about 7 quid) so quite expensive but we said ok and we were told it would be returned to us in the morning. The next morning Lynn woke up covered in the bites I mentioned at the beginning of the email. Maybe bed bugs but I didn't get any which is why we think she got them from the hostal cat. We got our laundry back the next day but were told that the price was 12,000 pesos because it took 2 loads. 14 quid for some laundry!!! I also 'lost' a pair of good (ie. expensive) walking socks. I know sometimes a sock goes missing in the wash but both socks from the same pair when that pair are the rolls-royce of the sock world is a little dubious in my opinion. So 14 quid for the laundry and I lose a 10 quid pair of socks. I enquire about the socks but just get shrugs and sorry's and don't know's. Well, that's the final straw. I may be shitting through the eye of a needle but I HAVE HAD ENOUGH AND WE ARE GOING SOMEWHERE ELSE!!!
Two hours later we find ourselves in the delightful 'Hotel Londres'. A converted old mansion in a beatuful and recently restored part of Santiago. Our room is beautiful. We have a double bed. Each!!! And the room could easily accomodate another 3 or 4! A window - oh joy of joys - we can now look out on the world from our beds! Big cupboards and a writing table to do our diaries. Also, a nice big bathroom, with a toilet, with a flush! Oh what luxury - I feel better already.
I notice this email has gotten lengthy again. Time to wrap things up, it's 9pm and I'm getting hungry as we haven't eaten yet.
We stay 3 nights in Hotel Londres before leaving Santiago and Chile and heading back east over the border into Argentina to the city of Mendoza which is where we are now. Other things we did in Santiago involve nearly getting caught in a riot inwhich 54 people were arrested and 19 police injured. It was a political march on Bank holiday Monday. A bit like a carnival with all the different parties marching up the roads in a parade waving flags and banners and distributing leaflets - there were left wing groups, right wing groups, atleast half a dozen different communist groups, a naturists group, a small Neo-Nazi group.... I was having a great time
snapping photos as they all went by but it turned a bit ugly, bottles and stones were thrown, riot police came from out of nowhere and we got out of there fast! We also had possibly our greatest culinary experience of the trip when Lynn discovered Santiago's only authentic Indian restaurant. Our first curry in 71 days. Oh, it was truly a magical moment! I have never enjoyed a lamb rogan josht so much in my life!
That's about it from Chile. We didn't like it much. It wasn't awful but Argentina was so much nicer. Chiloe was boring and a few bad experiences in Santiago with the hotel, the riot and the shits mean't we didn't have a great time there either all in all. So we're back in Argentina in the city of Mendoza where we arrived yesterday. Today we spent the day in a health spa just outside the city where there is a natural thermal spring. It was really nice - we had the thermal baths obviously and also a mud bath, a sauna, massage, reflexology, an excellent meal at the resort.... all in all a really good day.
We're here for a couple more days before heading north, probably to a town called La Rioja. Let you know about that when we get there though....
That's it you can wake up now and turn the computer off!
Bye for a bit,
Rich
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