Weekend in Valle Elqui (April 24th - 26th)

On the last weekend of April, Elias - one of my friends here - invited Lasse and me to his place in Vicuña in the Elqui Valley (a village of about 6000 people where the sun always shines).
Elias' street

("Welcome to Vicuña")

So on Friday night, Lasse and I got on the (very small and "with no room for our long legs"-) bus and after an hour we arrived to Vicuña around 10pm. Elias picked us up from the bus station, and we went to some of his friends' house for beer and a chat. Later on, we went to a disco to go dancing, but unfortunately it ended in a weird situation: I was sitting talking to someone, and then I felt something brushing against my back where I had my purse, so I turned around and saw this guy stuffing my cell phone into his pocket!! Luckily I saw it, and reacted quickly enough to snatch it out of his hands, but it kind of ruined my mood for the evening...

On Saturday, we had planned to go further into the Elqui Valley to the even smaller village, Pisco Elqui. So we got up and got on the bus at 10am, and an hour later we arrived. The weather there was even better than in Vicuña, and Pisco Elqui is a very idyllic little village! It is located in a small valley (of course) between dry hills, vineyards and a stream running through it, so it's still very green and lush!

We wandered about for a while, and then we found this place where we could go horseback riding! Neither of us were very good at it, but it sounded like fun and was only 4000 pesos (about 40 DKR) for 1 hour! Our "guide" was a very funny, cool guy, who first gave us a mini-course on how horses work, so we'd be able to actually control it, and then we went off, up through Pisco Elqui "centre" and up on the hills surrounding Pisco Elqui!

Me and the horse Trying to get on the horse

Ta dah - got on the horse Me, Lasse and Elias giving the horses water..

At one point, we galloped!!! I've ridden horses before, but I don't think I've ever galloped, and it's crazy, haha! I really admire people who know how to gallop without hurting their rear end AND being able to stay on the horse AND making it look really easy! When we got to the top of a hill, we had the best view of the Elqui Valley in both directions - WOW!

When we got back down to Pisco Elqui, we caught a bus back to Elias' mom's house in Vicuña for a late, home cooked lunch.

A view to the Elqui Valley

Pastel de choclo - corn pie, a very delicious pie with (of course) corn, minced meat, egg and 1 black olive.

Guayaba - a local fruit, very fresh and delicious!

In the evening we were all very tired, and ended up watching movies all night.

The next day, Sunday, Lasse and I went off to see the Capel distellery that makes pisco - the national drink of Chile (tastes like tequila).

On our way to Capel

When we finally got there, there was some kind of reunion, and we weren't allowed to enter for the tour:-( So in stead we had lunch at the restaurant where Elias works

Having very delicious kid (goat)!

and walked around Vicuña.

The Plaza de Armas

A statue in the park

After that we went up to the top of a hill next to Vicuña - Cerro de la Virgen (The Virgin's Hill) - for a beautiful view of the valley around Vicuña.

In the afternoon, Lasse and I went to this diked lake in the valley, where there is always a lot of wind and therefore lots of wind- and kite surfers! The village near the lake is called Gualliguaica, which caused us a lot of problems in pronouncing it and therefore finding transport to get there, haha.. But when we did find it, it was beautiful (and very windy!).

After that, we just hung out at Elias' house and went back to La Serena around 8pm.

What's up in La Serena

Just a small update on how things are going in general here in La Serena. I've now been here for almost 3 months, and time has passed by so fast! There is always things to do and places and people to see!

On a normal week, I have 2 classes every day - one before lunch break, and one after.. The lunch break is 1 1/2 hours, so a lot longer than I'm used to. But then you have time to study a bit, if you have a test or just didn't study for the next class:-) I've done the first round of tests, and am now beginning the second round. To pass a test (and the course) you have to get a 4 on a scale from 1-7. I passed 3 courses out of 4 in the first round of tests, so that's OK.. I only need to pass 3 courses to get enough points for uni back in Denmark.

I only have around 5 weeks left at uni now - and then a final presentation of a bigger project 2 weeks later, so it's gonna be really busy! I'm gonna have to study more from now on, I think - but well, that IS the reason I'm here for, haha..

I and some of the other exchange student girls go to "Baile Entretenido", dance classes, every Tuesday and Thursday, where we dance salsa, merengue and from Tuesday we begin Tango:-)! It's a lot of fun, and we've met some nice people there! It's a great way to get some exercise, haha..

When I'm in La Serena on the weekends, I also go surfing! Saturday at 11am, the university of La Serena do free surfing classes, but basically, you just rent the wet suit from the surfing school where we meet up, borrow the board from uni, and then it's just: get into the water and learn by doing! It's great fun! The water is getting cold, though, so my feet and my head are very cold just when I get in - I had some sort of "brain freeze" last time!:-S Really hurt... - but when you start surfing you get warm.. Surfing can be difficult, though! The last time, I had a rather small board, and it didn't go very well, but this Saturday, I had a bigger one (a sort of beginners board, hehe.. 7ft, 9 inches I think......), and it went really well!! COOL!:-D

The weather here in La Serena is really cold, and only getting colder!:-S It's around 15-20 degrees, I would say, and every morning there's a thick fog covering the whole town and the neighbour town, too! It normally decreases around 8 am, then comes back, and then descreases out to sea before noon.. On a bad day, the sun never really comes out, and the sky is grey.. Well, most days are like that.. When we get lucky, we get a bit of sun, but it's still really cold:-S So hanging your clothes out to dry is always a long process: it never dries during the day, 'cus of the humidity, and during the night, it get's really foggy and misty, so the clothes get even more wet! Then it takes most of the day for the clothes to dry up just a bit, and then the fogs rolls in again....!! Argh! Anyways, I can handle cold and humid weather, but the problem is that in Chile they don't use heating systems of any kind, so the temperature outside is bacisally the temperature inside!:-S At university, at home - anywhere! So it's not unsusual to see people wearing their jackets and coats at home, inside...! I don't understand why they don't install heating systems when it get's that cold here! Some days it just goes through to your bones, and you can never get warm:-S
The streets of La Serena (and many other cities, towns and villages in Chile) are filled with stray dogs. I think it's because people buy the dog when they're cute little puppies, and when they get too big to fit into their small houses/apartments, they leave them in the streets.. I feel so sorry, 'cus there are some really poor things out there:-( But some of them are just a pain in the ass! You see gangs of dogs just ruling the streets, and they get pretty timidating some times! One of the exchange students here got bitten TWICE by stray dogs! The funny thing though, is that the dogs are so used to the streets and the cars that they stop to see if any cars are coming before they cross the street!:-D But yeah, the dogs are everywhere - also at uni, and they even tend to enter our class rooms! It's not unusual to have an extra "guest" at some of our lectures, haha..

Here, the big and important meal of the day is lunch - we have lunch around 1-3 pm. Then around 5-6 pm, people have what is called "once". It means "eleven" in Spanish, and is mainly toasted bread with mashed avocado or pate, and a cup of coffee or tea. We're really hooked on avocado, 'cus it's relatively cheap here, and very tasty! Anyway, we've wondered what "eleven" has to do with bread and avocado and the afternoon... It turns out that there's a funny story behind it. I must admit, I can't remember it completely, but I think it was the Spanish conquerors who had the tradition of having an "aguardiente" in the afternoon - it's some sort of "brandy", i.e. alcohol. And since they were supposedly religious, that was a "no go", so they gave it a nick name: "once", because aguardiente has 11 letters - really clever, haha!

Still talking about food, I'd like to tell you about the Chilean "hot dog": completos! It's like a regular hot dog with bread, a sausage, ketchup etc., but then is has chopped tomatoes and avocado!!:-) And once we went to a place that has the biggest completos - or hot dogs - I've ever seen! At least 50 cm. long!

In Chile, the 21st of May is a national day. They commemorate the battle of the Pacific War in 1879 against Peru on the coast if Iquique (the north of Chile), where they lost "Esmeralda" and Arturo Prat - a very important... person:-) - died. Anyway, we were told that there would be a parade in every town and city, so we went to the harbour in Coquimbo (the neighbour city) and saw military, schools, horsemen and a lot more in the parade. There were a lot of people on the harbour and for once the sun was out - so we had a good day:-)

Patagonia vol. 3 (Parque Nacional Torres del Paine, Going from Puerto Natales to Santiago) April 4th - 11th

Around 10 am on Saturday the 4th, we arrived to the national park Parque Nacional Torres del Paine and had to pay an entrance fee of 15.000 pesos (around 25 US$/ 150 DKR), but because we have the Chilean identity card and therefore legally are "Chileans", we only had to pay 4000 pesos (7 US$/40 DKR) - long live patriotism, haha:-)! Anyway, we got to the Lake Pehoe which we had to cross in a catamaran - a beautiful 30 min. tour with a view to beautiful mountains and green fields!

When we arrived to the other side, we started our trek. We had a map with the paths that we chose to follow and began the trek. We walked for around 2 hours through amazing landscaping: hills in all the different brown, red, orange and green autumn colours, mountains with snow on the tops and lakes in different green and blue colours.

After the 2 hours we got to a camping spot where we left our backpacks to go up a valley - Valle del Francés - where we could see a glacier, (Glaciar del Francés) that had some blue spots (like the glacier we saw in Ushuaia), a small waterfall, the forest with rugged trees and at the end of the valley: a lake. B-E-A-UTIFUL! There were supposed to be condors (one of Chile's national animals), but unfortunately we didn't see one.. We walked back to our backpacks and walked on for another 2 hours. We passed by the lake - Lago Nordenskjold - we had seen from the Valle del Francés, and it was beautiful! The "beach" was all small, round and white stones, and the water was completely calm and turquoise blue and VERY cold!

We reached the Refugio Los Cuernos at 18:30 when it was getting dark. We rented tents (that were already set up for us - NICE!) and went inside the refugio to make dinner in the sittingroom (pasta, ketchup and tuna - a cheap and VERY delicious trekking-meal:-D ). We were all tired and had sore feet and legs, but it was so nice and warm, and even though people at the next table were having a fancy meal and would be sleeping in a warm and cosy bed, there was a nice atmosphere, and the waiters were really nice. We actually got dessert AND a homemade brownie from them - the best brownie ever!!:-) They also gave us a thick blanket so we wouldn't be cold during the night in our tents - so thoughtful!

Anyway, the facts of the day was:

Distance: 15 km.

Time: 6 hours

On Sunday the 5th we left the Refugio Los Cuernos by sunrise; at 7 am. We actually got up around 5:15 to have time to go inside the refugio to make porridge, and we also thought that the sun would rise aroung 6:30. But the door to the refugio was locked; it was dark, cold, we were tired and was it raining.. So we ended up half-way scaring the first person we saw inside the refugio: a (very bearded!) man who was just passing by the glass-door to go to the toilet - I guess we knocked on the door so hard that the guy working at the refugio also heard us, and in the end we got inside. Again, the very nice waiter gave us freshly baked bread and hot coffee - free of charge! Now, THAT'S customer service:-)

We left the refugio and trekked along the lake Lago Nordenskjold and through a more flat landscaping than the day before. Still stunning, though!

Some parts reminded me of what some of the landscaping in Scotland must be like. We didn't see a lot of animals, but we did see an eagle floating over the lake and valley - you don't see a lot of eagles in Denmark, so it was fascinating to see how calmly it navigated with it's backtail. We arrived to the Refugio Las Torres around 11 am - that is after 4 hours of trekking:-S

We were tired, and made lunch on the mini-gas burner that we brought, left our backpacks in our tents at the camping spot and around 12:30 we went off to go up another valley to see the Torres del Paine - the 3 pillars that give name to the park (Torres del Paine means The Paine Towers). Our legs were shaking and I guess we would all have preferred to wait another day before we did this trek, but we had to go back to Puerto Natales the next day, so off we went. We started up a rather steep hill, and when we got to the top, we turned around a "corner" on the mountainside of the valley, and the wind was almost paralyzing! It was SO strong, and I was only happy that we didn't carry our backpacks; it would have been difficult to stay in balance and not fall off the mountainside...!:-S

We kept on going down into the valley, through the woods and up another mountainside, but we could see that we might have overestimated our own strenght, and around 15:15 there was still no sight of the Torres del Paine. People we met on our way going down said that it would be at least another 1 1/2 hours to reach the view point to the Torres, and at this time we weren't able to speed up at all. I wanted to be back before sunset, so the two other girls, Melanie and Rebecca, and I decided to go back. We were back around 18 pm, and still had some daylight to take a shower and go to the refugio to get some heat. In the restaurant at the refugio, we actually met the bearded guy who had tried to let us in at the other refugio:-D What a coincidence!

Facts of the day:

Distance: 24 km.

Time: 8-9 hours

On Monday the 6th we slept in - or, that is, the ground was very hard and it was freezing cold, so I was up around 8 am. The funny thing was that we actually had the best view to the Torres del Paine from the camping spot - so bacially we hadn't had to go up the valley the day before.... But it was a nice trek anyway:-)

We only had to trek the last 7,5 km. back to the entrance of the park, where a bus would pick us up to go back to Puerto Natales, but it was some tough km.'s!

All together, these are the cold, hard facts from the tour:

Distance: 46,5 km.

Time: 16 hours.

Me, Rebecca, Melanie and Lasse
I'm proud of us:-)!

When we got back to Puerto Natales Monday afternoon, we had planned to go on a 4-day boattrip up through the fiordos and rivers of southern Chile to reach Puerto Montt, leaving Tuesday from Puerto Natales. The engine had broken going south from Puerto Montt, though, so the trip was cancelled:-( We - and a lot of other people who were going on the same tour - stayed another night in Puerto Natales, and on that evening desperately tried to find a flight or a bus going north to Santiago. It was a battle against time, and since a lot of other people were looking for the same, and Easter was coming up, it was almost impossible to find anything! Puerto Natales is already a very small town, which only lives off of the tourists going to Parque Torres del Paine and the boattrip to Puerto Montt, so the buses only left some days of the week, and there would be practically nothing to do if we had to stay more days in Puerto Natales.. Finally, we found 4 bustickets to Santiago leaving early the next morning, but we had to use all of our persuasive skills to buy the tickets, 'cus the office that we went to had to book the tickets by phone at another office in another town - and that office had closed..! So we bought the tickets having to get on the bus at 7:30 in the morning in Puerto Natales, not knowing if we would have the tickets for the next bus that we had to change into some hours later somewhere in no-man's-land! But apparently, the very nice man at the office in Puerto Natales had made some phone calls that same morning, so when we changed buses, we got the tickets, and could continue our trip calmly:-)

This is where we changed buses - wouldn't wanna stay there for long...!

The bus trip from Puerto Natales to Santiago took us all together 24 hours + 8 hours of waiting in Osorno somewhere in Chile + another 12 hours to reach Santiago..!:-S When we finally arrived to Santiago on the morning of Thursday the 9th, my feet had swollen to what felt like twice the size, and they really hurt:-S

We spent Thursday and Friday in Santiago the four of us, and 3 other exchange students from La Serena who came down that same weekend. We enjoyed the nice, hot weather as a change to the cold weather in the South. We just relaxed and went up to see the Parque Metropolitano on a hill/mountain where we could see almost all of the city.

In the evenings, we went out for cerveza and ron y coca cola and a lot of salsa:-) On Saturday the 11th, we went back to La Serena, tired but very happy after a trip full of events!

Patagonia, vol. 2 (El Calafate (Glacier Perito Moreno), Puerto Natales) April 2nd - 3rd

After half a day just stroling around Ushuaia, we flew north (I don't think you can even fly south from Ushiaia, haha) to El Calafate (also in Argentina) on the 1st of April. We landed around 16 in the afternoon and got to our hostel, Hostel America del Sur (definitely recommendable!!). The landscaping is very beautiful: when we drove from the airport, on one side you could see dry, moon-like landscaping and on the other side we saw very lush and green areas surrounding a lake and snowcovered mountains in the background. From our hostel we could see the lake and the mountains.

The people at the hostel helped us finding a tour to the glacier Perito Moreno, so the next day (Thursday the 2nd) we left the hostel at 8:30 and arrived at the national park Parque Nacional Los Glaciares around 10:30.

Here are some facts about Perito Moreno:

* The glacier Perito Moreno is part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field (Campo de Hielo Sur),

which has an area of around 16.000 km2.

* The glacier Perito Moreno itself has an area of around 250 km2, and is one of the few glaciers that doesn't lose volume - it has kept the same volume since 1917!

* It is one of the most dynamic glaciers of this area - It moves around 2,5 meters A DAY!!

* Each summer it loses about 14 meters in height, but since 70 % of the glacier is increasing and only 30 % decreasing, it quickly regains it's "losses".

* Perito Moreno is located around 180 above sealevel and at the same latitude as London, so you wouldn't think that it would be the best conditions for a glacier. The reason why it is there is the Andean Mountains and the winds from the Pacific Ocean: The strong and damp winds blowing from the west from the Pacific hit the Andean Mountains, are pushed upwards and turn into snow. The snow falls and the weight of all that snow (that is, it's own weight) is so heavy that the snow turns into ice.

* The icewall that we saw was about 70 meters high! The glacier is about 700 meters high at the deepest/highest spot!

Here, you can see some cool pictures and an even more cool video where a BIG piece falls off the glacier (fast forward to min. 2:20 if you don't want to see the whole movie): www.tierraunica.com/tierra_unica/2008/07/incredible-live-images-of-little-black-dogs-fall.html

Unfortunately we didn't see any pieces fall off. We heard a lot of pieces fall off, though, but inside the glacier - so we only heard cracking sounds and saw some small waves coming out from underneath the glacier into the lake.

We sailed close to the glacier and walked through a beautiful woodland before we went to get our "spike-shoes" on so we could walk on the glacier! We went off in a big group - around 20 people (not everyone were as young as we are, let's say it that way...), so we always had to wait for people.. But we got a quick introduction to how to walk on ice with the spike-shoes (going down a hill you for example look like Michael Jackson in the song Thriller doing the zombie-dance-move, haha), and went off. We walked on the glacier for around 2 hours, and it was beautiful. Nothing like I imagined it to be, though. I had imagined "white" ice with a plane surface. What we walked on, however, was "dirty" ice (the winds blow dirt from the woods onto the glacier) with many holes and "hills"; a very rough surface. But it was a very unique experience! Around half way we got a Whiskey On The Rocks - literally speaking! The "rocks" was of course the ice from the glacier, so even though I'm not fond of Whiskey, I had to try it - I mean, when would I ever get the chance again..?!:-)

After walking on the glacier, we had lunch with a view to the glacier - spectacular! And then we sailed back across the lake to get to a viewpoint where we could get a better view of the glacier from up a hill. It was spectacular! It sounds like a cliché, but when you are that close to one of nature's wonders, you really feel small!

On Friday the 3rd we left El Calafate to go a bit south to Puerto Natales in Chile. Again, the view was.. well, not spectacular - the landscaping was very flat, and we drove through "no man's land" for some hours before we got to Puerto Natales around 1pm. We had been recommended to go to a hostel called "Erratic Rock" because they have information meeting every day at 3pm about the national park Parque Nacional Torres del Paine where we wanted to go. Our plan was to go to the meeting and then catch a bus to the park later on in the afternoon. But since it was low season we had to wait 'till the next day to take the one bus that left a day to the park. But that didn't matter - we stayed at the Erratic Rock hostel - a very cosy hostel with very nice people! And they had the biggest VHS-collection (YES, VHS, not DVD - so old school, haha:-D ).

We had thought that we could go to the park and stay at a residence and then do 1-day-tours from there, so we could sleep in a bed and wouldn't have to carry our backpacks around. But at the info-meeting we realized that we had to do an actual trek to be able to see different parts of the park!:-S That is, we had to pack our backpacks with food, cooking equipment and only the necessary clothes etc., and we had to carry it around - no lamas or the like to carry our stuff like we had in Peru...! Also, we would have to sleep in tents and not in real beds - it would have been 3 times the price if we wanted to stay in the residencies and not just rent tents:-S Luckily the hostel had all the equipment we needed to rent, so we bought all the food we needed, packed our gear and got ready to get up at 6:30 the next day to go to the park Torres del Paine.