Great friends and Vineyards by the sea
We weren't quite feeling like humans yet when we were up and off out of Santiago again but this time on a bus. We'd had a great nights sleep, a few good showers and were well fed but we were on the move again fortunately this time just for a few days and with only a small bag in hand. We would be meeting a friend from Santiago we had met way back in Montañita 5 months prior and would be heading directly east to the coast where we'd be staying with her good friend Isabel. We'd had also met Isabel back in Montañita and the two of them had since travelled to South Africa staying with Mark's family here and there later describing it as the best holiday destination in the world. Given that they work for a one of the biggest travel agents and airlines in Chile between them and are thus well travelled and now plan to return in Mar next year I found this sentiment something to be quite proud of.
Once we had met up with Tamara we navigated the fantastic clean super cheap Santiago underground metro we were on a 1hr bus heading for the coast to spend the weekend with two almost perfect strangers we can now call true friends. We had an amazing time in Viña del Mar (vineyard of the sea) and our new friends were the perfect hosts in every way. We laughed, drank, lay on the beach, ate way too much and oh yes did a little sight seeing. Valparaíso which can somehow be translated as Valle Paraíso or Paradise Valley is commonly known as Valpo and is one of that country's most important seaports and an increasingly significant part of the Chilean culture. Sailors and tourists have long since called Valpo 'Little San Francisco' or 'The Jewel of the Pacific' and it truly is a special city with an ambiance and feeling that is hard to describe. The street are all small and narrow and mostly cobble stoned. The houses are ancient and rickety but adorned with all colours of the rainbow. It is large but quaint and the atmosphere so invitation and interesting that you could easily send a day just wandering the streets and get lost in all the little antique shops and street side café.
Viña del Mar the modern town right next door to the older Valpo and its contrast is very visible. Its new and everything is clean and the streets are now filled with sky scrappers and hotels as opposed to the little dilapidated homes you see in Valpo. Many of the rich of Chile have holiday homes or fancy apartments here and the seafront is a modern board-walk that could be compared to that of Rio. Being in Valpo and Viña and spending time with our wonderful Chilean friends who are just so awesome, warm and kind was the perfect way to spend the first few days of our holiday off the bike. It had been a long way from Lima and the rest in the beach town with perfect friends, amazing food and gorgeous beaches was just what we needed. We did a few of the touristy things like go up the many 'Cerros' which are small hills of which there are about 20 or so scattered around the Valpo area and each have a little tram, elevator or funicular that take you up to a view point from where you can look down over the whole bay and the the city. It really is a spectacular sight on a good day. As always we stayed away from the tourist spots as much as possible and stuck to the local spots which Isabel and Tamara happily took us.
On our last day after a very late night in which we finally arrived home well after 5am, we spent the entire day sleeping on the beach in the sun and catching up on some much needed sun tanning. Even though on the bikes we are in the sun all day, we are so covered up and pasted with cream that our poor little skinny bodies never actually see the sun.
The highlight of the weekend break off the bikes was without doubt that amazing friends that treated us so well and opened their homes to us with such warmth and kindness. Isabel's family and friends were all so kind to us and even Isabel's mom who is suffering from decades of Parkinson's disease as I understand for around 30 years now joined us at the dinner table which was quite and honour for me because I understand conversation and moving around is not easy for her. I think this too was an eye opener for me as much as anything on this trip as I have heard a lot about this disease and on the face of it the person suffering from it appears very debilitated however if you look past this they are still the same intellectual person on the inside it just a takes a bit of time for them to get their bodies to express their thoughts and movements. Isabel's mom really did take take quite a bit of interest in our trip which I enjoyed.
A 3rd team member and a fat big braai!
A few months back I received a mail for Nick, a good friend of a really good friend of mine from London, who I had met a few times before I headed back to South Africa querying as to ether he could possibly join us on this crazy journey as he was coming out to hopefully teach some English in South America but had some time to kill. I knew he had some great BMXing skills to add to the team so of course we were quite happy to have the balmy Pom along.
Nick was due to arrive in Santiago the day after we got back from our trip to the coast. We were both quite excited to have our new team member join us and that evening our host, Waldo, too was back from being away and had arranged a nice big braai for us to meet all his local South African, Italian, Ghanaian and Chilean friends . Our gallivanting was not over yet though and Mark, Nick and I had planned to fly that night to Punta Arenas down in the far south of Chile, almost on the tip of the continent ,for 7 days to do some hiking, so would be cutting the party short at around midnight and heading off to the airport.
Nick arrived at the house on Thursday 29 Oct morning after a long flight from the UK pretty bushed but after a shower was ready to start preparing for the party later that night and our flight to the bottom of the world. Nick had brought out a few supplies like extra front panniers (bike bags), a waterproof map holder and few Yorkies from the UK so it was bit like Christmas for me.
The South African embassy in Santiago had also invited us around to collect some more South Africa and World Cup 2010 goodies to had out along the way so while Nick cleaned and headed we popped over the embassy. Again the people at the embassy were so friendly and more than happy to meet with us and provide us with some promotional goods. I´d just like to say thank you too all of those who we met with and helped us out especially the Counsellor Anfra Murteira.
The braai later that night was absolutely fantastic. I seriously felt like I was back home but with a Chilean twist. For a start we too had a few local guests, Coche and Poncho who we met in Bolivia while checking out the Salar de Uni (their other brother actually just happened to live in the same building as Waldo) and of course our new good friend from Santiago, Tamara. Waldo had invited his South African friends from his work, Anglo, as well as an Italian and a Ghanaian so we great international and local mix and made some conversations hilarious. Tamara had arrive straight from work so was early and is still shy with her English and it was Nick's first day on the continent so didn't know too much Spanish. Later when Mark and I were in the kitchen we heard Nick shouting in English and suddenly realised that the conversation couldn't be flowing too well so listen and laughed for a bit but then took pity on Tamara who Nick seemed to think was hard of hearing.
Later that evening at the braai Spanish was mostly the spoken language we all had in common but obviously each at different levels. My favourite part was when I found myself having a conversation with black and white South Africans in Spanish and the funniest thing about it is you can still hear the various South African accents shining through just as they do when speaking English! It made me think how in 6 months I can learn to speak Spanish well enough to converse but haven't managed this in more than one of our other 10 official South African languages, shocking! I must say I was quite jealous of the black South African's as they definitely seem to pick up a new language far quicker, obviously not because of their colour, but because they have grown up having to learn multiple languages where as most white South African's can get by with English or Afrikaans their home language, I guess its true what they say the more languages you learn the easier it gets.
At midnight we had to leave the fantastic braai but felt so super privileged to have been part of such a crazy South African reunion. Me and one of the girls were just saying how thanks to the changes in South Africa just 15 years before we can now sit as adults with a world of opportunities before us as proud South African's regardless of colour, and for this I will be eternally grateful.
Torres del Paine
We had booked the cheapest flight possible to Punta Arenas so this meant that we flew out at 2am and arrived around 5am in Punta Arenas, in the southern Patagonia region, but thanks to Tamara we had a free 4 star hotel waiting to receive us! The hotel was awesome and took us in way before check in time so we all just hopped on our beds and had a good mid-morning nap before we set out about town planning our 5 day hike to Torres del Paine.
Patagonia is truly one of the last remaining unspoilt and natural wonders of this home of ours we call planet Earth. It sits at the very tip of the world and after you leave the shores and fjords of this magical land there is nothing left but icy water before you will hit the great land mass of the Antarctica. The great Cordillera del Paine (mountain range of pain) is a small but spectacular mountain group in Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia. It is located 400 km (244 miles) north of Punta Arenas, and about 2 500 km south of the Chilean capital Santiago. Basically, Patagonia is a geographic region containing the southernmost portion of South America. Located in Argentina and Chile, it comprises the southernmost portion of the Andes mountains to the west and south, and plateaux and low plains to the east.
After some preparation shopping, a great nights sleep and a free huge buffet breakfast at the hotel the following morning we caught a bus about 4 hours to the small town of Puerto Natales which is the closest town to the Torres del Paine national park and from there we went on a another bus and then a catamaran across one of the many icy lakes to the start of the hike in the park. The 'W' route is by far the most popular hike in the area due to the fact that you get to see all the main highlights and also only tales 5 days which makes it very accessible to most level of hikers. It is called the 'W' for the shape of the route in which you basically walk up three valleys giving it the shape of a 'W'.
We finally arrived at the starting point at the Refugio Pehoe at just before 7pm and then had to decided if we could do the 4 hour day 1 hike in the 2 hours of sunlight that we had left. In the end we decided to go for it and just push on fairly quickly. The walk was easy and we were able to make it just after dark at around 9:20pm with the help of our head lamps. On the way we were treating to a snow storm that settled a silence over us that was totally deafening. There is nothing more awesome than the deadly silence of snow falling all around you. The ground quickly turned white and the trees all took on a white covering that made us feel like we were in a fantasy land.
The highlight of the first leg of the 'W' is the Glacier Grey, a large glacier calving into the lake of the same name. Seeing this giant monster carving his way down the mountain and pushing into the lake is an astonishing sight and we were lucky to have been able to get within a couple of hundreds meters of the glacier.
The second valley was a great highlight of the whole walk. Its called the Valle del Francés (Frenchman's Valley), often rated as the best scenery in the whole park. The path leads up into a snowy dead-end, where several small glaciers are visible and in every direction there is something phenomenal to see. When you look ahead its at the giant mountains and there crazy rock formations that have been created over millions of years as the weather and glaciers cut their prints into the land, to the right you see the back of the great Torres Del Paine, to the left a row of enormous snow covered peaks and then if you turn and look over your shoulder at the valley behind you the view of the great lakes that lie peacefully in the valleys below with the southern Andes perched majestically behind them are enough to stop you in your tracks. Its impossible to describe the beauty, it hurts its so gorgeous and truly a humbling experience on so many levels.
Patagonia is a region in which the wind does not blow, but howls and gales as it rushes over the land off the freezing sea in search of the warmer inland areas. The shear power of the wind and its volume are something that we had never experienced and it was truly frightening to lie in your tent with a sound so intense. On the second night of the hike we camped under some large trees where we were woken several times through the night by the wind which smashed through the trees and our tents convinced that if the wind didn't rip my tent apart then maybe a branch tearing from a tree may but fortunately neither came to play.
The third valley takes you up to the viewpoint from where you can best see the famous Torres del Paine (the towers of pain). The towers consist of two distinctive rock types (sedimentary and granite) and their colours are completely contrasting, one being dark and the other very light almost a grey tone. The Towers reach up to almost 3000m and are dramatic in all senses. Its a sight that makes the 5 days of walking in the cold and sleeping in a tent all worth it. We were luckily to have walked quick enough to have had time to see the towers both at sunset and sunrise. However, our the 4am hike in freezing temperatures to arrive back there for sunrise proved a little fruitless because the clouds prevented the towers from lighting up a vibrant orange as often happens at sunrise, and more importantly at the time, provide some much needed heat so after that we made a quick dash back.
We had not had mobile phone reception for the few days in the park so on our return as soon as I got mobile coverage I got numerous text messages saying I had missed numerous calls and thus figured something must be up and true as Bob when I checked my email I received the great news that my sister had gotten engaged over the weekend. Congratulations to Dawn and Peter, I look forward to the wedding next year!
That night we spent another night at a fantastic hotel on the port courtesy of Tamara in Puerto Natales. After all the nights in the tents these hotel stays were unbelievable! We had big double beds with fluffy cushions, pillows, fancy baths, TV and under floor heating. There is no way that we could ever afford hotels of this quality but once again the kindness and generosity of our fellow human beings afforded us this great pleasure.
Chilean Oktoberfest
Once we had returned from our hike we had planned to wash, restock and head off on the bikes the next day, Saturday, but then we were invited by the South African expats we had met at Waldo's braai to join them at the local Oktoberfest just outside of Santiago, so our pending departure was postponed by a day. That Saturday could have been any Saturday back in Jo´burg, that morning the sky was clear and the air crisp when we all met at Leratu´s house. Having an Englishman in our party we were more or less on time but the rest still being on African time, or newly adopted even less punctual South American time, were almost an hour late but that just meant more time to stand in the tree lined streets and chit chat.
The the ride there and the Oktoberfest itself could have been mistaken for one in Jo´burg so I won't go into any more detail other than to say we had another great time just being South African's of different backgrounds celebrating a great sunny day doing something many South African's enjoy, drinking beer!
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