Oct 2008

Navimag. A name with reputation among travellers going to Patagonia. Our trip was pretty chaotic though and sadly we didn´t get the chance to see Cotopaxi.
The full story would be too full, let´s keep it simple: The ferry went half a day too late and that meant we had to embarque at midnight before leaving in the morning.
This gave us the chance to go to the movies with Alexisa and Julia from Paris and an Italian guy. We enjoyed the crazy movie "Baja Anestesia", but because the ship didn´t go according to schedule, some sights on the way through the fjords would be passed during the night or at 5 am, resulting in us getting up at sunrise every day. Unfortunately, the sunrise was hidden behind big clouds and rain pouring out of them though.
At least this made me feel like a hero every morning, knowing I had gotten up at 5 in order to get wet and not see much beauty out there in the cold.

The trip had other marvellous moments, too: Getting on and off the ship, I felt like an actor in Armageddon, walking through the massive belly of the ship. We met some amazing guys, like the Dutch couple Pieter and Pascale who have been living in Munich for quite some time and were really interesting to talk to. Or Terry, the retired headmaster from San Francisco. Or two younger Dutch couples. Or the dolphin. Other people saw real dolphins, too, and whales. The best I got were a couple of albatrosses (Cristina: "Oh, come on, they are small! They can´t be the biggest flying birds!") and some sea lions.

NAVIMAG GOOD
Knowing what will be on for breakfast next morning.
The chance to have good weather, then the trip would be amazing.
Getting the cup for Cris just on time.
Great people to meet.

NAVIMAG BAD
Too much food.
Murphy´s law preventing us from having good weather.
A day of sea sickness.
Dolphins inside the ship, not next to it.

Now we arrived in Puerto Natales and are gonna try to hook up with those funny guys for a little halloween party. It´s the entrance to the supposedly fantastic Torres del Paine. We´ll have a 5dayshike there in the heart of Patagonia.
The funny thing is that it´s basically on the same latitude as Dresden (51º), but weather changes several times a day and the wind easily reaches 120 km/h. Right now we´re at around 5 °C. Enjoy :D

Telling more in case we get out of there , oh don´t be scared now! mart

Mart: Yeah, my travelling spirit arrived!
Today was an awesome day. We first went to the German school in Bariloche (I'm supposed to get some research done) and got some questionnaires filled and some interviews done. A really good feeling, also because the reception was very hearty.
Afterwards we went for the Circuito Chico, the little little circuit. It was roughy 30 km and took us about 4 hours - beautiful scenery, and Cris got tired quickly, not being a trained cyclist... With a lot of team spirit we made it just in time to return the bikes, for one minute.
Cris dead, Mart dead.
We missed the bus back to Bariloche.
He wouldn't stop for us off the bus stop...
We put up the thumb instead.
The second car stopped.
Big pick-up.
Lovely people.
Loads of fun and jokes in Spanish -- we were able to express everything we wanted to, zombies getting alive again.
Got lost?
Pictures might follow.

Just a quick good bad:

Good:
- hostel 1004 in the biggest building in Bariloche, with great ppl and lovely views over the lake
- roadtrip by Gol instead of Golf. back to basic.
- hiking 24 k on an Peninsula in Nahuel Huapi lake to see orange brown Arrayanes trees, meeting less humans than cows and bulls, plus redheaded woodpecker. Cristina´s "wow", "wow", "crazy", and "wow" looking at the huge trees
- our first camping outside, sleeping in the tent on the shores of Lago Espejo, the first of the 7 Lakes
- Cris wanting to improve cycling skills
- cycling until falling on Circuito "supposedly Chico"
- succeeding as a team
---with one minute to go before bike rental closes---
- getting a ride just after missing the bus home. our first hitchhiking in South America, a great ride!

Bad:
- hard grips on the rented bike´s handlebar
- no street signs
- overrated 7 lakes route, leading through averrage landscapes compared to other sceneries in the region
- overrated hippie market in El Bolsón

Mart:
After seeing the end of the world pt. I in Chile, we came back to the crowded noise in touristy Bariloche. We got into Hostel 1004 - a great place in the only high building in town, with lovely people and stunning views over the Nahual Huapi lake. This is another paradise, so much water surrounded by mountains with snowy peaks. It's very cold and windy, a good preparation for the next steps southwards which ensures that we'll purchase some more jumpers, socks, gloves, hats, scarves. Before getting on the ferryboat through the Chilean fjords, we wanna see the 7 lakes district, a famous national park. Hoping that weather gets better though. Meaningless entry, hum? Well, I'm just talkative for two reasons: We had a very good school visit today (I'm doing school tourism for my BA thesis while travelling) and tomorrow I might drive a VW Gol - the spartanic South American variant of a Golf. >D

Cheers, more pics when we're back in town, big hugs!

ups:
"Moldova? That's a first!" ten times per day...
a kilo meat for 4 US dollars
the calm atmosphere in the woods today, where only the cracking of the trees could be heard and Cristina's unbelieving "WOOOW!"
snow in the morning.

downs:
only met people from 18 countries so far, 11 of which European, 2 of which Chile and Argentina; most travellers: Aussies, NZ, US, Germany, France, NL, Swiss, Israel.
200 g chocolate for 4 US dollars
Films on busses. Feels like home though, with Russian bus drivers...

On the Bus Terminal from Santiago, we met this English guy, called Scott, who gave us a piece of paper with info on some cabanas situated in between two national parks. Next day we arrived there, at "the end of the world".

These statues were built next to graves, in order to keep bad spirits away. Now they are in the Pre-Columbian Art Museum, Santiago; still creating an impressive sight.

Theater in the street

Martin:
Sorry for not writing earlier. Waiting is a normal thing, in Argentina, too.
The first weeks flew by. Of course Cris is writing too, so I wanna share my personal favourites, good and bad.

Buenos Aires:
Pros:
The football fan songs in South America in general and at Independente in special - not the boring songs European fans chant. Here it is melodic, rhythmic, long, loud, fun.

Café Americano Doble at Las Violetas. Perfecto.

Hunting for mate.

Cons:
The dirty water at La Boca port. Amazingly horrible and disgusting. Disaster tourism at its worst...

The city.

Hunting for a network...

Iguazu waterfalls:

Pros:
The thrill of hearing stories with scared Cris about aggressive vipers in the jungle when there´s no other way out.
Soooo much green and blue and flow and fall.
The sweet animals.

Cons:
The bored-to-death-boring-to-death backpackers and travelers in the americanized hostel.
The whole city becoming a waterfall the second day when we wanted to see the Brazilean side. At that point we actually decided to go South directly, skipping Brazil.

Cordoba
Pros:
Walking the city with fellow travellers... in that case Dan from Israel, a very relaxed chap.

Delicious all you can eat for 4 Euros in a real place when being hungry.

The handycrafts market with so much diversity and so many nice things.

Cons:
The wifi in hostels never worked so far...

Mendoza

Pros:
Meeting Ralf from Dresden in his paradise.

The best maracuja ice cream ever.

The beautifully tiled banks in the parks.

Rafting with scared-then-happy Cris

Cons:
Aconcagua, the highest mountain outside the Himalaya hiding from us.

Argentinean-Chilean border

Pros:
Officers showing around Cris´visa to their co-workers which was a curiosity.
The incredible mountain views.

Cons:
Air.
Waiting.
Grey.

Valparaíso

Pros:
Painted houses and graffiti everywhere.
Hills, steep roads.
The Deutsche Schule in Valpo.
Our hosts John and Hannah.
The little boy not succeeding in stealing out of the backpack.
The tour through the harbour for 2 Dollars in a rotten boat going close to all the things and animals, including sea lions, a pelican, and supposedly a penguin.
Pablo Neruda´s bedroom, shower, restrooms, bar.

Cons:
/

Santiago
Pros:
Finally a double bed room.
Watching the crazed people in a bar when Chile wins against Argentina for the first time since 1973. The bar looked like a catastrophy area afterwards. Intense.
The Precolombian Museum. Very very beautiful art and interesting cultures.
A city not as bad as people say.

Cons:
Exchange offices...
---
What´s ahead? Patagonia, national parks, and the end of the world! Plus Buenos Aires again, and then up north.

Rainy days in Buenos Aires,
Amazing views in Iguazu,
Great time in Cordoba with Dan (from Israel),
Exciting rafting experience in Mendoza,
Friendly and funny border controls on the way to Chile,
Colourful Valparaiso...
What does Santiago have to offer? :D

We've enjoyed 18 days of our honeymoon already. Tomorrow we are heading further.

Buenos Aires did not seem to be the smiley and nice city everyone talked about. It is an extremely touristic city and the sad thing is that many of the rumors we hear about Buenos Aires turned out to be some hook for tourists and it did not have this local and authentic air. I got the feeling that the tango danced in the streets of the quarter "La Boca" were very vivid as long as the tourists kept coming back, not any longer. At night, there was nothing left, but some dark streets and a badly polluted river. In Buenos Aires, together with many other couchsurfers, we attended the best percussion concert ever. ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!! With more than 1000 people, a percussion band that was making that place explode and dances over dances, we had our best time there, jumping, doing pogo, and feeling the beats in our chests.
A great enrichment or improving of our stay in the Argentinian capital, was Carlos, the couchsurfer from the airplane, who was so friendly, funny and welcoming!

Leaving Buenos Aires, we decided that we are heading towards places with a lot of nature, where we would meet more locals, have a great time and sunny weather.

Even if, we did not manage to get in touch with any of the locals (besides the bus and taxi drivers :D), we spent an absolutely great time, enjoying the nice view of the Iguazu Waterfalls and constantly being amazed by the power of the waterfalls, the always-green nature and the sweet animals. Ok, all were sweet, even the 3 cm long ant, but the viper serpent that people were talking about.

As Mart already wrote, next day Puerto Iguazu literally turned into a real waterfall. By the way, it is the raining season at the moment in South America, but we are really doing our best to escape it :D... Luckily so far, we did a good job, hehehehe

We decided to skip Brazil and its German communities... the nature has simply much more to offer. That is why at the moment we are heading in south, in order to enjoy as many natural parks and small towns.

Cordoba: sweet weater, smily people and we met Dan!! Dan is a traveller from Israel, who like many other people tried to fix our laptop, which seems to be unfixable, hehehe. We really miss the Family Guy episodes before the good-night-sleep :D. There we enjoyed the local festivity dedicated to Santa Maria, where all the city quarters brought statues of Santa Maria and marched with them through the city. People, dogs, music, cars, statues, us: everything was there :D The warm pasta in the evening was very welcomed by the three of us. Mart and I fell asleep by watching Wally. On the nexy day, the three of us left very enthusiastic to enjoy the argentinian-german Oktoberfest. Well, what should have we expected: IT WAS MONDAY NOON, so the place looked as crowded as it should be on a Monday noon :D. We walked through the town, had our food at a local restaurant, where man pays for the kilo and had our beers, enjoying a funny talk about males and their way of thinking. Martin was satisfied: in the 8000 inhabitant town (plus many other tourists), Martin managed to talk German to a local, whose family was German-Swiss. The rice-vegetable meal in the evening was very welcomed, as well. During our second tentative to watch Wally, we fell asleep again :D

Mendoza: nice, calm town, with crazy, meaning good water for rafting. We stayed at Ralf´s place, a cool guy from Dresden, so I finally managed to talk more Saxon :D What a beautiful open-air hall they had :D we had nice talks and moldo-saxan food :D. As I somehow got convinced to pay for the rafting ticket, next day, at 8:30 we had to be ready for the rafting trip. As many of you have been already surprised: tda-tda, I cannot swim. I was so scared, damn, there were huge stones in the river, there was water in the river, of course, and there was me, all shaking and missing Mendoza :S. The experience was fabolous though, it was absolutely amazing to feel the power of the water and the nice work-team that we managed to handle :D Hahaha, by the way we were successful to staying on budget (as the ones who fell in the water had to buy beer for the whole team ;D)) Sun-tanning came next.

Valparaiso: absolutely amazing, nice friendly people, COLOURFUL HOUSES, sea-lions jumping out of the water, lots of hills to walk, and a city where I could gladly spend some more time. For the ones who ever get there, I could really reccommend you vising the museum La Sebastiana. It gave us some ideas on how we would like to have our bedroom :D Nice walks and steep lifts, made our experience.

Now we are in Santiago, where there are more than 30 degrees C. Not as bad as we though, and the Pre-Columbian Museum, where we managed to get for free ;D is truly wow. There one can find out a lot about the indigenous people populating the Meso- and South America.

Tonight, we are heading towards Patagonia. Our dream becomes true.

Mart is next to me, writing as well on our Chilian-Argentinian experience, I am really curious to read his article, as well :D

PS: we write little, we enjoy much though .