Puerto Natales, Chile for the 'W' Trek

From the most southernly city in the world, the only way is north, which is the direction we headed after leaving Ushuaia. We hopped on our first Argentinian bus (which was pretty average after all the platitudes Argentinian buses were getting from most people we met in Colombia), its destination Puerto Natales in Chile for us to do the ‘W’ trek. Our bus journey involved a border crossing, a mild panic about tomatoes (no fruit or veg, or cattle semen for that matter, allowed into Chile) and most importantly our first meeting with Lene and Jakob from Denmark. We discovered that we were staying at the same hostel and so when we arrived in Puerto Natales and it was getting dark we headed there together. Sam and I had planned to give ourselves a day to rest and get stuff sorted and figured out for our five day hike through the National Park Torres del Paine. Lene and Jakob set off the next afternoon and we waved them goodbye. We planned to get the 7am bus the day after and spent nearly all of the rest of that day packing our bags (which weighed the same as a small human), complete with sleeping bags, gas stove, cooking implements, all our food, the tent and our waterproofs. No shower equipment or change of clothes were packed, we were going ferrel/going to immerse ourselves in nature.

The W Trek – 25^th – 29^th November

Day 1

We boarded the bus feeling doubtful at 7am due to the threatening grey clouds and fairly strong wind in Puerto Natales. We arrived at the lake to board the catamaran and I realised the full extent of the task ahead of me. I was fully dressed from head to toe in warm and wet weather clothing but the wind kept knocking me sideways, whipping my wet weather clothes in fits and starts around my body. We made it onto the catamaran and waited for it to begin its journey across to the other side of the lake in order for us to start the ‘W’ trek from West to East. As we sat inside in the relative warmth, we felt the wind shaking the boat as it shivered passed it, blowing up lake water so high that it splashed on the windows that I was looking out of. This lake water was the fantastic colour of turquoise, and an unbelievably Disney version of the colour as well. Then we set off. The wind lifted the catamaran clean out of the water as we travelled over the lake at speed. I loved the feeling in my tummy but felt sure that even though the water looked like a friendly Disney style version of turquoise, if the catamaran flipped and we began to sink I certainly wouldn’t particularly feel Disney style as I was dying an icy death!! We finally got there and left the boat only to be greeted with the strongest wind I think I can remember experiencing. We battled our way through it to get to the communal kitchen at the first Refugio. Despite being only a few metres from where the catamaran docked, it took us a fair while to battle there at a 45 degree angle. As we squeezed ourselves inside the Refugio we bumped into Lene and Jakob who had been stuck there from the previous night due to the wind and the rain. We pulled our socks up and decided that whatever the weather we were going to make the camp at Refugio Grey at the top of the first vertical line of the W by close to the allotted time of three hours marked on the map. Off we set. Blown this way and that, the strength of the wind was magnified by the sheer weight of my backpack and it took all the ounces of energy I had to climb up and up and up. The ascent did not seem to want to stop! I had to resign myself to the fact that this was going to be the complete personality of the road ahead. On we battled. After about two hours the wind seemed to die down and the rain ceased lashing my face and as my eyes focussed at the first mirador and I caught sight of my first ICEBERG!! I was so shocked and excited! I knew we were heading towards the Grey glacier but it hadn’t sunk in that I might be actually experiencing icebergs. I could not believe how blue they were, it was as if part of a crisp winter’s blue sky had been caught inside a crystal, totally mystifying and utterly beguiling. I could not stop searching for them from then on as we followed the coast of the lake up to the glacier itself. As we rounded the peninsula I had seen icebergs of all different shapes and sizes and taken so many photos. Then came the glacier itself. It was a phenomenal sight. This glacier was part of the most southernly edge of the third largest ice field in the world (after Antarctica and Greenland). It was incredible to follow its shape as it undulated over the mountains and finally emptied its form into the huge turquoise lake before our eyes. We trekked for a while all the time in sight of the glacier and getting closer to it. Finally we arrived at our first campsite and set up our tent. It was a glorious site, on the edge of the glacier’s lake, in which icebergs would float past. I got so excited that I would be sleeping next to icebergs!! We cooked up to tasty dinner on our stove and then walked a few minutes more to the mirador to look at the glacier more closely. It was at this place that we saw the most incredible and huge iceberg. It was as if we were looking at an alien spaceship. I spent a long time staring at the curves and marvelling at the blue emanating from it. 

After a while we returned to our camp and I was asked by a couple to photo them taking a dip in the icy lake. I was stunned and asked them why on god’s green earth they would want to do such a thing. It turns out that Elis and Bron had made a list of things they have to do on their long trip before they came away and taking a dip in icy water was one of them. I laughed and took photos whilst they did a wobbly ice dance and then ran to a hot shower. Then Lene and Jakob turned up as the sun had come out they walked as fast as they could, making the camp before sun down. As the sun went down on our first day, we watched as the colours changed on the icebergs as it did in the sky. We all talked together for a while longer and then, exhausted, we all parted to curl up in our sleeping bags and hope that our supermarket purchased sleeping bags were in some way effective enough to keep us warm throughout the night.

Day 2

We awoke very early at about seven AM, packed up our things and got dressed. We ate a small breakfast, actually realising that we hadn’t planned well for breakfast at all as we watched the others eating strength inducing bowls of oatmeal. We all set off heading for the free Camp Italiano. Sam and I quickly fell behind as my hips were hurting under the weight of my bag which made climbing and descending the steep inclines and steps that lay on our path a challenge. He found us both a walking stick each which I relied heavily upon for the rest of the trip. My stick had obviously walked the ‘W’ a couple of times already as its handle part was worn smooth, I thought about its previous owners success at completing the trek and got strength from that knowledge a few times along the way. The wind had died down so much on this second day and we were able to look around at the environment so much more. It struck me that the countryside looked a lot like the countryside I had seen in the Lake District, very rocky and arid with sparse green shrubs. Apart from the intensely red succulent flowers that covered bushes and the, you know, icebergs I would have said it was a dead ringer. At one of the streams on the way down I had the experience I had been waiting for. I drank directly from one of the glacier streams. I have been wanting to have this experience for all of my life and finally being able to do this was such a joy. I feel it is such a privilege to be able to drink directly from a water source, and such a primal thing. It’s an almost lost human experience really, so I feel very lucky to have been able to do this and we continued to be able to drink from the glacier streams and rivers for the next two weeks. 

Once we reached the first Refugio, had lunch and set off again the landscape completely changed and we had to stop several times to marvel at the blend of colours. We began walking along one of the huge lakes in the area. The water appeared so different to the previous day as the wind had disappeared and left the surface of the lake utterly still and reflective. The blue sky and sunshine created a smudging of a variety of colours from the lake, the sky, the landscape and the various springtime flowers in colours of red, yellow, purple and blue. It was astounding and we had to make sure that we kept our pace up at times otherwise we would have been staring at the colours for so long that we would never have made it to the camp. We did however, over a rickety wooden bridge hung over a fast flowing river, another from which we drank several times as we marvelled at the mountains on the horizon and our ears were filled with the booming of some of the most fast flowing and freshest water on the planet. We all made our camp under the thin tall trees at the side of the river and after walking a long way we ate, chatted and fell soundly asleep.

Day 3

We left our large backpacks in the tent at the camp as we climbed up to the French Glacier in Valle de Frances, the middle vertical line of the ‘W’ shape. We had been told that we will be able to hear the thunderous cracking of the ice in the glacier and see small avalanches, which was a very exciting prospect. I was finding that my food hallucinations were getting stronger and in more detail as the days went on. I was dreaming about the food I’d like to eat and even the food we had was becoming a delicious incentive. I think the others were feeling the same as nearly all our conversations were turning to food! As we climbed up to the glacier over boulders and streams and along tiny paths we began to hear rumbles in the mountains around us. Then came a large rolling thunderous roar followed by a cracking sound and we knew an avalanche would be possible so we all scrambled to the edge of the path and craned to see the falling snow. Sure enough a long stream of snow streaming down the mountainside. It was one of those moments that you feel the enormity of nature and it makes you feel very small and covered in shivers. Then it makes me breathe fast and squeal with excitement at having witnessed such an awesome thing. We reached the mirador, quickly replacing all of our layers as the cold started to set into our bodies through our stillness. Hearing and watching a few more thunderous cracks and avalanches, we ate our strength inducing chocolate bars and prepared ourselves for the descent back to the camp. We made it back quickly, packed up the tent and gathered what strength we could from our lunchtime soup. We were fast realising that there is a lot of truth in the saying ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ as we were really missing ours. Our muscles screamed as we pulled on our getting lighter but still as heavy as a small elephant backpacks and set off along the second horizontal bottom line of the ‘W’. We aimed to reach a Refugio along the line and set up camp there so our long day’s walking tomorrow would be about 5.5 kms shorter. Again, the terrain and landscape completely changed becoming of a more springtime ilk with hazy, blurred colours, green bushes, grass and a tiny path leading through. Due to our tiredness however, this part of the journey seemed to take forever! I could see the headland round which I knew the Refugio was but it didn’t seem to want to get any closer! Suddenly the path led onto a beach so we laid down our loads and skimmed stones on the turquoise surface of the glacier lake for some time. After this break, it was on with the bags again and the final push to camp. We made it and found a spot to camp at the bottom of a little wood near the lake. It was a windy spot however making the trees whistle and moan as wind flew through them. But someone had helpfully made a woven wood wind fence and fashioned a low wood table and some stools out of logs. So we cooked our dinner in the most efficient time yet (we had had practice cooking the exact same meal for the last two nights and were fuelled by the worry that we were running out of gas!) then we went in search of the others. We found them and sat in their camp next to the snow capped sheer mountain faces and drank tea as we watched the condors circling the tops of the mountains peaks. Exhausted but happy we fell asleep as my mind’s eye traced the shapes the wind made in the tops of the trees as it whistled through them.

Day 4

Today was going to be a long old slog. Not only were my limbs aching with overuse but it was taking me a while to rid the cold in my bones. After failing from lack of breakfast for the last two mornings, Samly and I decided to make a breakfast of spaghetti cooked in onion, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. So we packed up our things and walked up to the others’ camp to begin cooking. When everyone was ready we all set off to walk the rest of the horizontal bottom line and to walk almost all of the way up the last vertical line of the ‘W’ to Camp Torres. Our breakfast was delicious and it did the trick as we zoomed off, quickly warming up under our layers of clothes. For the whole of the morning we walked along a tiny path, coming across many streams which we all drank from, and through vast open hillsides on which grew thorny green bushes and cracked and curly half dead trees. Check out my pack. Freakin HUGE! I have grown muscles on my muscles.

It was so windy (the predominant weather feature of Patagonia so far) and we sought shelter behind a tree and some bushes to eat lunch. We spotted a Guanaco (a Llama like creature) curiously approaching us and watched as it gracefully galloped away. Then we set off again this time in search of the shortcut that would begin to take us up the valley again towards the famous Torres del Paine (or towers of pain). At this point, as the path began to ascend steadily but assuredly, I hit my own towers of pain called ‘The Wall’. Many people have been there too and I have heard about this place but here I was there myself. I received much encouragement, especially from Elis to ‘smash the wall’ and after a little time spent with a grimaced face, screaming and heavy muscles I found that ‘The Wall’ had disappeared and I was lighter and stepping more easily again. TAKE THAT WALL!! We rounded the corner onto the last vertical part of the ‘W’ and into the most beautiful valley. At the bottom a torrid turquoise river gushed and tumbled passed the rocks and boulders in its path and we felt the air temperature drop quite dramatically. (Is that a smile or a grimace?! I think it's a smilace or a grimile).

As I hunkered all my limbs (including my extra walking stick limb) up and up over paths through shale landslides and rocky outcrops the valley was becoming more and more dramatic and beautiful as we ascended higher and higher. 

Then we realised that it was actually snowing! Incredible. We reached the final Refugio and stopped for a break. Sam and I had found that we had more money than we thought (having got out of not paying at the unfriendly and extortionate last Refugio campsite) so we treated ourselves to a huge bar of chocolate. I think this was the most delicious chocolate I have ever tasted and the best reward. I felt like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory. Not only that but my old friends chocolate and sugar gave me super zoom powers much to the amusement of the others and just after we started walking the last little bit to our free camp, I was off! Zoom zoom!! I wasn’t as zoomy as Elis however who had already zoomed off as Sam, Bron, Lene, Jakob and I stood around in the warmth of the Refugio comparing places on the world map on the wall. His natural pace was probably three times as fast as mine! The last part of our longest day’s walk was mostly uphill through small woods and over bridges, under the tall thin trees that seem to make up most of the small woods in these parts. We saw some Woody the Woodpeckers after first hearing them and then made our camp on a sloping campsite, our coldest one yet. We decided to eat our dinner before the final and very, very steep climb to the mirador to see the Torres del Paine. We had to keep our fingers crossed that the clouds would stay away so we could actually see them and it was a risk as we set out after our fourth (and most tastiest) meal of tomato spaghetti with garlic, onions and herbs. Sam sprang up the mountains like a mountain goat but I chuffed away as a steady steam train would, sweating under my waterproofs (mainly put on as it was SO cold). I ascended to the mirador by myself and had a proper ‘wow’ moment as the path led out onto the exposed mountainside and snowflakes were moving towards my face from all directions. It took my breath away, in all ways! Another time in which, as I looked about me at the snow capped mountains above me and the tiny trees and streams below me, I felt so small in the enormity of nature. We made it to the mirador and to our fortune there were hardly any clouds affording an almost unhampered view of the Torres del Paine. We had made it! 

I felt very happy with my achievement as I realised again that this was probably the hardest thing I have had to do in a very long time.

Day 5

By the last day we had all cemented as a group, having discovered an average pace, talked about so many things, cooked together, numbed our hands washing up in 0 degrees, held joint food hallucinations, used nature’s toilet (although not exactly together in this instance), gave each other support when we were feeling tired or achy, dealt with not washing and above all seen the most extraordinary things together; icebergs and glaciers, valleys and snow capped mountains, condors and the insides of Refugios (the first one very friendly, the second one not so, the third one had magic chocolate which cost the earth – or £6.50, but was worth every penny), snow and wind, glorious blue skies, purple, red, yellow and green hazy blurring over turquoise lakes, and finally the snow capped peaks of the Torres del Paine up close. It had been monumental. But wait! Our trek had not ended yet. After warming ourselves on cups of tea and shivering into our sleeping bags we knew we had to wake up, pack up camp and walk several more kilometres to the Refugio at the bottom of the mountain to catch to shuttle bus back to the bus which would take us all back to Puerto Natales. Elis and Bron were the most committed amongst us as they got up at four AM to climb the mountain again and see the towers in the sunrise as they are lit up orange. For Sam, Lene, Jakob and I, our bodies were saying a firm NO WAY to that as we had no intention f getting up before the sun. That last night’s sleep was the coldest yet, with our sleeping bags barely keeping us warm enough to keep sleeping, so we were up early but slow to breakfast, the cold and sleep still clinging to our bodies. We gathered our sticks, lugged on our backpacks (with were a lot lighter now) for the last time and left our camp at the top of the hill, immediately talking about which restaurant, what food and drink we will have to celebrate that evening. The way back was mostly downhill with spectacular views continuing throughout the descent until we crossed another suspended wooden bridge to come to a stop on a grassy verge to wait for the shuttle bus. Now we really had made it! So we celebrated by each buying some chocolate biscuits from the little kiosk there. The shuttle bus came and took us, affording us five star views of the Torres del Paine all the way until we stopped for the big bus to take us back to town. What a crazy few days. Some I will never forget.

Back in Puerto Natales

We came back a day earlier than we reserved a room for so our hostel found us another room for half price in their sister hostel. I took a shower for about an hour, completely washing myself about three times and so ended up feeling like new human being, then we headed out for a monster meal all together to celebrate. They all had huge lumps of (what they termed) as tasty meat and I had a monster palta, cheese and salad sandwich, choclo soup, patas fritas and another salad and some tasty Chilean red wine Cabernet Sauvignon, yum. The red wine in Argetina and Chile have been amazing, so delicious, I don’t think I have ever tasted such tasty wine. We chatted, were merry and then all fell into our beds. 

I don’t think I even dreamed that night! But we were up the next day to move into our hostel and to gather things we needed for our bus trip back across the Chile/Argentinian border to El Calafate, where we planned to see the huge glacier, Perito Moreno, which was at the other end of the ice field we had seen on the ‘W’ trek. The others were also heading there so we would be together a while longer! So we visited the supermarket, the dried fruit guy (delicious dried fruit!), had a long café visit and lounged around in our hostel room, watching football and films and repacking our monsters of back packs. Off we head on our next adventure!

Hola Argentina! Buenos Aires and flying to the most southernly city in the world,Ushuaia

NB - blogging in Argentina has had a huge set back as t'internet connection is positively backward here, so sorry for the lack of photos. We'll try to upload to flickr when we can get the connection to stop bottoming out and to speed up from snail pace to walking pace... could take a while!

Buenos Aires 17.11.11 – 19.11.11

We travelled through the night from Colombia but our airline had first delayed our flight for eleven hours, then for another six. So we ended up  boarding and taking off from the country we had travelled around for two months at five AM and through three quarter closed eyes. We arrived in BA in the late afternoon and took a bus from the airport then a taxi from Retiro (el centro) heading towards Palermo. We had left a rainy, cloudy and cold Bogota and landed in a beautiful, sunshiny and gloriously warm Buenos Aires. It was spring time and very warm. As we drove quite a long drive from the centre to Palermo with a very friendly television producer guy, I noticed how large and clean the city was. And then I saw my first PURPLE tree! I fell in love with these wonderful trees covered in beautiful long and lilac purple blossom. 

They were everywhere in BA and most of my photography for the one and a half days we were there featured them heavily.

We wandered the streets of Palermo that afternoon and evening, this place felt like a breath of fresh air and we quickly started commenting through our smiles on how much we love the place. We did become aware of one draw back however. It was becoming increasingly obvious to us just how much more expensive Argentina was going to be. Nevertheless, we had saved money in Colombia and were happy to treat ourselves which meant a slap up meal in a parrilla where Samly could get his first taste of the famous Argentinian steak he craved. We found a good place that evening, not touristy and quite cheap and ate and drank til we felt bursting. The wine was insanely delicious, a Malbec of course. 


We spent the next day wandering around Palermo, which people had described as a ‘posh’ area and was filled with cute boutique shops, interesting architecture, sunny streets and smiley passers by. We felt safe in this area both day and night and it seemed like things were really going on here. We passed an huge impromptu drumming group in a side street and as we walked, the streets felt excited under our feet. The weather was glorious! It felt like summer time at home. The sun felt warming and sleep inducing rather than dangerous (although due to the hole in the ozone it most definitely is dangerous!) there were summer breezes and an almost completely blue sky. We spent so long wandering from Palermo Veijo to Recoleta that before we reached the famous Recoleta cemetery it had closed. We knew we would be back as we planned to spend new years here so it wasn’t too bad and before we knew it we were headed towards the airport again to catch our flight to Ushuaia – the most southernly city in the world!

Ushuaia 19.11.11 – 23.11.11

Our very early flight came into sight of Ushuaia over the high snow capped peaks that flanked the city. The plane went up and down sending my stomach into knots and making my palms very sweaty. I don’t think I can remember such a turbulent flight. I kept looking around at the faces of the other passengers and the air stewards and this appeared to be normal so that kept the panic in my throat from rising into a full blown scream – just. To my relief we landed and I thanked the heavens that I wouldn’t have to deal with another flight until we returned home. Flying has been difficult for me this time round, not sure why, I’ve never had a problem with it before. Ushuaia took some getting used to but in the end I really liked the place. It has two main focusses – industry and tourism and not much in between. Houses are cobbled together out of corrugated iron and cement or are luxurious and empty wood affairs probably a second home to a wealthy owner. Ushuaia was cold. The kind of cold that gets into your bones making them feel like they’re made of metal. The aforementioned buildings however are very colourful and they brighten up the sky when it turns grey. It’s crazy to think it’s spring here, what with all the snow, the sleet and the hailstones still around. I wore all my clothes, every day. Our hostel was another grower. We found it a strange, unwelcoming place at first but soon came round after the best night’s sleep we’ve had since being away and cooking in the kitchen which afforded the best views from  kitchen window I have ever seen. The view fell away from the window down over the patchwork of colourful houses into the bay and was lined by snow capped mountains. Not too shabby! Better than an expensive restaurant I’d say! We even had a belter of a view from our shower!

We decided to do some walking around the area and walk up to the chairlift which would take us to see our first glacier. But this was not meant to be as our crappy map reading skills led us instead down through the residential area which the Lonely Planet warns you not to go down on the account of the packs of wild dogs. At first we found the dogs to be very loud as we passed their houses and began commenting on how fervently they were carrying out their guard dog duties. Then we started seeing the usual groups of seemingly stray dogs on the grassy parts as we walked passed. But these ones looked particularly unfriendly. Some even began barking and lunging towards us, one even nipped Samly’s heel! This was not good. I remembered the old stick trick and we both armed ourselves with sticks. This worked brilliantly as just holding up the stick seemed to make the dogs shrink back from their lunging. The sticks were particularly useful when we realised that we had taken the wrong road and needed to retrace our wild dog infested tracks. We found a short cut through wood but the trail ended at the other side, so we decided to have a sub zero picnic and then give up and go home. An experience but not the one we had planned for! Hopefully our sea lion and penguin mission would be more successful. Good god, the coldest picnic in the world! If you look closely my lips are actually blue!

That evening we found a huge supermarket which had everything we had been looking for in terms of our camping mission. We had secured the tent in Bogota and had some camping equipment such as my billy can, grater, chopping board and our spice box, but to really save money and be as autonomous as we wanted to be we needed more. And here it all was for knock down prices! Result! We bought two sleeping bags, a gas stove, another pan and some other bits and bobs which should see us through our camping experience for the next few weeks. Brilliant! We also got our passports stamped ‘El Fin del Mundo’ (the end of the world) and send some postcards home. (Not sure if any of you have got them yet?)

The next day we boarded a catamaran and headed out into Beagle Channel. Our mission was to see sea lions and penguins and we were very excited! We had met Vivian in our hostel who had headed out on a ship to Antartica, something which we promised for ourselves for another time but this was the closest we would come this time. It was fantastic! We saw a whole island of sea lions, lying about scratching their bellies and honking. 

Then more islands filled with different varieties of cormorants and finally an island of penguins! Magellanic penguins who were the most fascinating creatures to watch! They were really curious and we could see for ourselves their different abilities on land and in the sea. They were very cumbersome and gallumphing on land but as soon as they were immersed in the sea they became so graceful and super, super fast! 

We also saw the famous El Faro light house. As we sailed back towards Ushuaia down the Beagle channel the land that flanked us belonged to Argentina on the right and Chile on the left. Admittedly we spent most of the return journey warm in the belly of the catamaran but as we stared out the window, from time to time we saw a couple of penguin heads bobbing on the surface, looking at us and then ducking back down as they swam away. We saw these cheeky penguin heads nearly all the way back to Ushuaia!

Then we were headed for our bus to Puerto Natales in Chile to experience the ‘W’ trek. We hadn’t bargained on crossing into Chile but it seemed like over land from Ushuaia you have no choice really. We’d been told about the ‘W’ trek at the beginning of our trip in Colombia so we knew it was a good thing to be heading towards. On the journey up we met Jakob and Lene who were to become some of our lovely travelling buddies for the next two weeks!

Throughout our journey north and my gazing out the window, I was surprised to see how flat the land is in south Patagonia. Also it is so barren, and seemingly farmed the heck out of. Nearly all the land that we passed on route to Puerto Natales was fenced off cattle grazing land. I am getting more and more interested in just how much cattle grazing farming is destroying land and the environment in which it is occurring and how it effects our planet as a whole. I will certainly be looking into this more closely. I feel, as a lot of others seem to as well, that it is a huge problem for our world and if there is truth in the fact, that I was told about earlier on in our trip, that methane is more destructive to our planet’s atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is exceptionally worrying. It’s not just cattle you see in the land next to the road, it’s also guanacos, a cousin of the Llama and some emu like birds called Rheas and lots and lots of sheep.

We travelled the whole day next to a sandwich of blue sky and pea green arid landscape with a rugged and continuous mountain sandwich filling. To cross over form Isla Grande we needed to take a ferry across the Strait of Magellan. Our bus loaded itself onto a huge metal structure of a ferry and we all piled off and up the stairs, wrapped up tightly to keep away the Antarctic winds. As the ferry moved off and we were staring at the light blue colour of the sea, we started to see black shapes bobbing up and down in the water! “Delfines!” someone shouted. Brilliant! We watched the tiny black and white dolphins as they rose and bobbed through the surface of the sea. We also saw pairs of penguin heads bobbing around too.


After we had driven for a long time and completed a border crossing, complete with a tomato freak out (you're not allowed to take fruit or veg across the border), we reached Puerto Natales at dusk which is at the crazy time of 10:20pm in Argentina.

Down the east side and our trip in the south

5th October - 8th November


San Gil
San Gil is a lovely town, really friendly and relaxed, cool and clean. We stayed at a really friendly hostel called Macondo and met some lovely people. We visited a beeeautiful colonial town called Barichara which was 45 minute bus ride away through the most astonishing countryside. We wandered around the cobbled streets and the white washed buildings, up to a little sculpture park at the top and during our wandering we found an incredible rock that jutted out into the glorious mountains which run through the area. Hello mountains, so good to see you again, I've missed you!

On the way up we passed an artisan shop and I bought some hand twisted rope that should come in handy when we need to fix camping stuff to our bags.


After our time spent with the very self sufficient Aussie girls on the peninsula I decided that I'd like to try that way of travelling and see if we can save some pennies whilst also getting some of the food and nutrients into our systems that had been seriously lacking in our diet of rice and patacones and rice and patacones on the Caribbean coast. I needed some serious veg. So we bought a chopping board, a billy can and a grater with a pot which we filled with herbs and spices. We were now all set for cooking well anywhere!

Ville de Leyva
After a couple of days in San Gil (and deciding against the very tempting paragliding opportunity in the adrenalin capital of Colombia) we travelled to the beautiful colonial town of Ville de Leyva which has the biggest town square in the Americas I think.

Again lovely cobbled streets (which make you stumble very easily when you're gazing up at the buildings or the mountains behind then or the sky above which I did a LOT) and white washed buildings, fresh air and mountains. It was the elections whilst we were there which was a very interesting occasion. We sat in the square and watched whilst nearly everyone in the town came out, including a lot of the Indian population, the descendants of the Musica people, in their thick wool ponchos, to register and vote. Massive people watching ensued!


We stayed in a cute old ladies place just off the square which were the cheapest digs we could find as everywhere else was about three times as much. We found amazing coffee in a little panaderia as well and hiked up into the mountain side for a little bit, almost loosing our guide book in a pause for coffee (fast becoming my new vice). Our realisation of this only came after asking directions and realising that we didn't have it anymore! So we had to walk down again and then back up a very large hill to retrieve it. Not too bad when the countryside you're walking in is that beautiful though!

We also made up to see El Fossil the only complete Kronosaurus fossil in the world still in the same place it was found in 1977. It was flipping huge! About seven metres in length. The whole area around Ville de Leyva is known for the huge amounts of fossils from the Mesozoic and Cretaceous eras.

Popayan
After a couple of days in Ville de Leyva we made our way very far south to lovely Popayan. Initially we didn't think we'd have time to visit the south of Colombia so we were very happy to discover that in fact we did! And what beauty that way beheld! It was like stepping into magic fairy tale land. Incredible undulating lush green hills dotted with cranky little trees and rocks that actually had been spewed from volcanoes a long time ago. Wowser. After a really uncomfortable night bus we made it to a lovely hostel. It was such a homely place with a perfect kitchen for cooking it up right nice! Really friendly. Popayan itself is a lovely large colonial town (not sure if it's a city), again with whitewashed buildings and a lovely big plaza and two look out points which were good to watch the sunset. It was Halloween the day we arrived and it seemed that the families went crazy for it in Popayan. It seemed to be fun to dress up their children and make them pose in front of cartoon backdrops and ask the shopkeepers for sweets. They were crazy for it. The streets were mobbed with minature characters and sweet wrappers started building up on the floor. Halloween maddness!

We visited a town called Silvia about an hour away for the Tuesday market. It is not a tourist market but one where the Guambiano people come to from the countryside around to sell their food and crafts to each other and the locals.

It's mainly a fruit and veg market in which Samly's eyes widened and his breath quickened with all the excitement and possibility for cooking! We skipped around from one stall to the next with our noses full of sweet smells and our eyes full of the colours around us. We bought many fruit and veg with many of the old ladies laughing at us when we asked how much one chilli was, saying 'take it take it!' We filled our woven bag with fruit and veg, including a bunch of tiny garlics, delicious avocados the size of a small football, massive beef tomatoes, chillies, and menthol-y tasting mora (blackberries).

We also bought some hand carved wooden spoons, about 3 metres of tiny shell and stone beaded string that the Guambiano ladies wrap round and round their necks and that must have taken the lady who strung it about a week to make! I also bought some earrings made from palm seeds and a tiny painting painted by a tiny old Guambiano lady. The Guambiano people wear very striking clothes. The men wore bright purple skirts, the women wore black pleated skirts and bright purple shawls, the men wore hand woven ponchos, they both wore very sensible black leather boots and a tiny trilbies perched high on their heads. Amazing to look at. Apparently they don't like people taking their photo so we had to be very surreptitious about it. I think Silvia is the friendliest market I have been to in my life! Everyone was smiling and laughing and saying 'hello, welcome!' Needless to say we took the food back to Popayan and Samly cooked up several amazingly tasty meals with them. Yumble.

We wanted to visit San Agustin and the desert at Tatacoa to see the stars at the observatory there and also the tombs at Tierradentro. Amongst the friends we met in Popayan we met Helen and she wanted to do this also so we set off on a little adventure together, starting with San Agustin. Leaving our big bags in the hostel we were chipping it around with our little bags again complete with several bags of food and cooking utensils to enable us to cook for ourselves wherever we ended up! Sweet.


San Agustin
First stop San Agustin. The bus ride was quite difficult. After six hours of constant juddery journeying in a small bus along and up rock littered bumpy tracks high into the mountains we arrived shaken not stirred at the side of the road near San Agustin. A Colectivo picked us up and took us to the town centre. We walked out of town a bit and up a very steep hill to find Finca el Maco a beautiful working farm with strange wonky cabanas, a huge homely kitchen, a funny guy called Rick, big camp fires, owls, all surrounded by beautiful countryside and mountains and lots and lots and lots of bloody moquos. Got eaten to death we did. Even though we turned up without a reservation and the place was full even in low season, Samly and I lucked out completely as they offered us a five star cabana for next to nothing and we lived a day in luxury before moving into the huge teepee that we had all to ourselves. Samly cooked us up such tastiness with some Silvian veg etc.

We set off almost as soon as we got there to try and make the archaeological park to see the pre-Colombian statues that are so famous. We pegged it round the park looking at all the statues sites and the best ones were all the statues placed in the forest and the ones right on top of a hill with views of the astounding mountain sides and countryside all around. The statues are carved into rocks in the same place they had landed after they had been spewed out by old volcanoes. Not much is known about the peoples who did the carving as they had not written language, so archaeologists have pieced together some theories based on what they have found. Some even purport that the statues could have been carved by the northernly most reaches of the Inca people. Graves were made next to the statues using large flat stones to mark out the shape of the grave. The creatures carved into the stones arguably represent the elements and various aspects of a spiritual life; birds to represent the spirit realm, serpents to represent the earthly realm and some other creatures to represent the underworld.

The next day we just chilled out and walked a short way to a huge valley through which a river ran.


Desierto de Tatacoa
Getting into the desert involved getting a colectivo car to Neiva and then a bus to Ville Veija and then a motor taxi straight out into the desert.

We stopped at the observatory and asked the manager and his family if we could string hammocks there. So we had our three hammocks hanging up in the porch of the observatory and looking out across the tiny red terrain of the desert filled with cacti. So we had made it to the desert for mine and Samly´s anniversary, sweet. We even got to see fireworks! Very randomly we were looking out into the darkness on our first night and spotted something like a Catherine Wheel going round, weird and very cool. Our first night there was a Friday night and the observatory was descended upon by two hundred school children! It was mental! They were so interested in us that one kid actually said at one point ´ssh ssh, I want to hear what the gringo is saying!´ They wanted to know what we thought about Colombia and various things and taking our photos, it was crazy like having the paparazzi around us! They were such cool kids.

It was a very cloudy night, there were no stars twinkling and so we decided, what with all those people being there as well, that we would wait until the following night to take a tour of the observatory and look at the stars.


During the night it monsooned. The monsoons have started getting longer and more intrusive on our day to days now. In fact they have caused chaos in the entire country. They have had huge landslides in Manizales, with water being cut off from homes and a state of emergency being called. All over the country there are floods, it's awful.


After a bit of a soggy nights sleep we awoke and spent the next day chilling in our hammocks, cooking in the family's kitchen and walking through the desert. Passing loads of cacti and goats. The land had been formed in a strange way. It was like the grand canyon but on miniscule scale, like we were giants and the land had shrunk.

That night we went up to the roof and found lots of people and about five different telescopes of different sizes. There was some cloud in the sky but it was fast moving so at points we had clear views of some constellations, the moon and Jupiter! I have never looked through such powerful telescopes before and it is absolutely mental. The crazy professor told us a lot about the sky of which we understood some of as his Spanish was so clear and hugely animated and well pronounced. We asked him questions about why the moon waxes and wanes from top to bottom in Colombia when at home it moves from side to side and we talked about Sir Patrick Moore and Carl Sagan. We saw the moon so vividly it sent shivers down my spine in the warm night. We could see every nook and crany of the craters. We tried to take some photos but then the Prof came along and took some beauties!

I also saw Jupiter and the colours on its surface and four of its moons! I was blown away, my favourite planet! I think we might stretch to getting our own telescope when we get our new place and a garden... That last night we also tried some sweets made from cactus which were surprisingly tasty! There was a huge storm that last night and we had to take down our hammocks, get into our full waterproofs and take shelter next to the main building until it stopped. The next morning we awoke and packed up our things to take a motor taxi back through the desert into the next town, waving goodbye to probably the wettest desert we will ever know and the cutest kids Miguel and Karen that played with us for our stay.

Tierradentro

After taking a colectivo to Neiva and another bus to La Plata we thought we would be stranded there as it was the Day of the Dead celebrations and a national holiday. We met a very helpful man who got us onto a colectivo, a familiar squished up affair on the bumpy, stone littered tracks for two hours up to San Juan de Pisimbala, the Pueblo from which we can walk around the mountains to find the tombs. They found these tombs and know very little about them. They consist of stone carved steps winding down into vaults that have been carved out of the ground with pillars to support them and decorated using white, black and red dyes. As with a lot of early painting I have seem the painting seem to consist of geometrical shapes. There are also faces carved into the stone pillars.They were incredible. All three of us started humming different notes and it sounded very eerie and awesome. We went down and up quite a few of these tombs, each one was unique and an incredible experience.

Walking through the countryside around was an amazing experience also. It was like walking in a dream, so beautiful. I think this has been our favourite walking in Colombia around these parts and we were both sad that we didn't have enough time to spend more here. Walking through the clouds as they hugged the mountainsides, passing little waterfalls, walking over lush green carpet like grass, it was like heaven!

We stayed at a really lovely place too run by tiny Leonardo and his family. They cooked amazingly tasty food (as our supplies had run out and we fancied a break) and it was all so cheap.


The next day we had to head back to Popayan.
We spent the entire day travelling and made it back to the lovely, homely hostel there, cleaned ourselves up, Samly cooked us up yet another treat and feeling full and tired we fell asleep.
The next day came for us to part ways. We had been travelling with Helen for six days and she was now headed to Ecuador and we were headed back to Bogota on the night bus for our final days in Colombia before heading to a new set of adventures in Argentina. She waved us off in our taxi to the bus station and off we pootled on the final leg of our Colombian adventure.

Back to the Mountains

After weeks on the frenetic, crazy, hot, loud Caribbean coast we travelled south again to return to the mountains. in our longest and most involved journey yet. We travelled for just over twenty four hours from Punta Gallinas to San Gil in Santander. We went from one mode of transport to the next with the fluidity of running water, it was incredible! We love being on the move so we were in heaven!


On our last morning at the tippedyest top of South America in Punta Gallinas we waited for the monsoon to stop and boarded our little speed boat at 10am.
Then we pootled our way around the coast to Port Bolivar which took one and a half hours.
Then we took a jeep to Uribia which took one and a half hours.
Then a car to Rioacha which took one hour.
Then a bus to Santa Marta which took three hours.
Then we took a buseta and walked to our hostel.
After we arrived we repacked our morchilas, showered, bought lots of food from Exito and then
Took a taxi to the bus station in Santa Marta.
Then a bus from Santa Marta to Bucaramanga which took ten hours.
Then finally we took a bus to San Gil which took two and a half hours.


An amazing journey and one I felt I had to geekily document here!
It was incredible to see the countryside change from the burnt orange of the desert cliffs on the peninsula to the lush green, unbelievably gorgeous fairy tale like hills of Santander. In the morning after our night bus from Santa Marta all the way down to Bucaramanga I awoke with my head on the window, opening my eyes to misty cloud hugged mountains. I sighed, 'I'm back!' I thought as I smiled at the mountain peaks. I love you montanas.


We loved the massive drop in temperature, the serenity, that everywhere was so clean! Tranquilo, so green that it was like returning to the Shire.


hmmmmmmmmmmm mountains x