After staying overnight in San Pedro, in Northern Chile,
we were off again, hot footing it down the highway bound
for Santiago. But on the way we discovered that Chile has
the most marvellous loos (washrooms), as I’ve said
earlier, every service station welcomes one with hot water,
toilet paper, toilet attendants who seem to take a pride in
keeping their domain clean … And our group pigged out on
ice cream, chocolate, crisps and other fattening snacks
from the Esso shop! Then we discovered La Serena, a seaside
resort in Chile with the most marvellous shops. I am
ashamed to say we revelled in the cleanliness, the sheer
European look of the place and again lots of money was
spent on clothes and food and stocking up on film and even
one of our members bought a tent in order to free himself
from a two-man tent which wasn’t really big enough
for him and his companion!
And so on to Santiago, a place we could have done with
staying in a little longer but unfortunately, time was
short. We arrived in the late afternoon, stayed just two
nights and were away very early on the second morning,
having acquired two new people and reacquired one of our
members who was supposed to leave us in Santiago and join
another truck as we had three new people supposedly joining
us, but at the last minute, the third new person had
slipped a disc and was unable to come so our departing
member was suddenly rejoining us, much to our pleasure as
we have all bonded now and were sorry enough to see two of
our group depart at the end of their respective trips, one
to return to Scotland and the other to Australia.
And so I am now in Pucón and here we stay for three
days. There is a volcano to climb, horse riding to be done,
rafting and trekking, etc, but at the moment all yours
truly is doing is catching up on e-mails and chilling out.
There is a lovely lake to go and sit beside or wander
around and for the time being I am going to do my own thing
and try and get some time to myself – all this togetherness
tends to pall after a while and it is nice to say –
“Cheerio,” to the people taking packed lunches
off to their various day long activities and to as it were,
mentally close the door on them and take my shoes off, put
my feet up and relax!
From Pucón we went on to Bariloche, which is a small but
interesting little town and I would have liked to stay
there longer than the one night but it wasn’t to be.
We camped outside of Bariloche for just the one night (I
hate these one nighters, all that trouble of putting the
tent up for 12 hours and then taking it down again) but
that’s life on the road! From Bariloche we went to a
place called Perito Moreno where again we spent the one
night and then on to our next port of call, a place called
El Chalten. We stayed here for three nights when members of
our group went rafting (two fell out into the river and got
quite a fright) and others went glacier walking leaving the
camp site at 0500 in the morning and not getting back until
2100. They said they had a good time and although quite a
frightening and challenging one as well as the weather was
none too good up high and they were all very sore from
muscles that were overstrained.
My friend Judith and I went on a long, long trek that
was meant to last 8 hours but in fact stretched out to 12
hours as we took a different path on the way back and
discovered it was a very circuitous route. Needless to say
we were exhausted by the finish as we had left at 0820 and
got back at 2045! Luckily the group had got a barbecue
going and we arrived just at serving up time! And we beat
the glacier walkers who clocked in just 15 minutes later.
But the first part of our trek was fantastic. We were
walking to view some glaciers rather than walk them and for
the whole of our walk, the full 8 hours, on the outward and
return journey, we were seeing those beautiful snow clad
peaks with their blue glaciers shimmering in the sunshine
and could not resist taking picture after picture after
picture of virtually the same scene but seen from different
aspects. I dare say we will both throw away most of them
but we were enthralled. And when we eventually arrived at
the foot of the glacier (still out of sight) we had to
cross a fast flowing river coming down from the glacier and
there were only two logs straddling each other with no
handholds.
Luckily, there was a man who had attempted to cross with
other women and he was standing astride the logs in the
centre of the stream and another man was assisting us from
the bank so we managed somehow to straddle the logs in a
prone position and inch our way across with help! Judith
went first and so I had to follow but my heart was in my
mouth the whole time and I didn’t dare think of what
might happen if I slipped or the man helping me lost his
hand hold on me! But I got over and it was a great
achievement. Then after a walk up a gentle slope we came to
a real hard climb with lots of loose shale and small
boulders with hardly any hand holds and only the occasional
prickly bush to grab hold of and immediately let go of and
so often it was a case of scrabbling on hands and knees to
get up to the top. But finally we managed to get to the
first summit, so to speak only to find a downward slope
leading to another upward slope, but we were determined to
carry on and it was well worth it as when we did get to the
foot of the actual glacier it was the most beautiful sight
we had seen in a long time as there was a brilliant blue
lake and these fantastic glaciers cascading down the
mountain. We sat and ate our lunch there and just marvelled
at the scenery and of course took heaps more photos. But we
were the only two to do this particular walk because the
members of our group had gone to see a completely different
more popular glacier in the opposite direction to us.
If you’d like to contact Iris, whether to wish her
luck with her trip or to ask questions about her itinerary
and places visited, I am sure she would like to hear from
you. She can be contacted on: irisej2002@yahoo.co.uk
