Unfortunately that’s not
the case so we had to sit down and figure out what we wanted to see, how would
we get there and how many overnight buses could we stomach? The key questions.
It’s when you realize that a 16-hour overnight bus doesn’t actually move you
that far down the country that you figure out you might need to change your
travel plans!
Our first stop was easy
enough as we flew right in there- Santiago. The only test we had to pass was
getting through passport control- usually that’s an easy enough case of handing
over your passport (without it’s cover) and waiting for them to stamp it- this
time it wasn’t so clear cut. This passport controller took a shine to me or at
least took a shine to my passport and proceeded to question me (in a very
friendly manner!) on each stamp in my passport- he seemed genuinely curious as
to who I was and how I had so many stamps, was asking such questions as to what
sort of food they have in Laos and where exactly Vanuatu is, was I US Army? All valid
questions, at least I thought it was friendly, maybe the questions were more
malicious and I was just too innocent to realise! 
Santiago is a very nice
city in its own right, very developed, like Buenos Aires it has a very cool
European vibe to it. Our first challenge on arrival was to finish off the
literal longest day of our lives- we flew from Queenstown, which is 13 hours
ahead of Greenwich Mean time and finished up being 3 hours behind so we flew
for 11 hours and ended up being 5 hours prior to when we started…….. I’m still
confused.
After a few days of acclimatizing
to back to the future and walking the length and breadth of Santiago we headed
south to Puerto Varas, a popular seaside area for Chileans to spend their
holidays- unfortunately we weren’t there for leisure, we were there purely on
business- our plan was to climb the Osorno Volcano. 2,860m high with a glacier
occupying the top 1,000m of it. Should I be worried?
Our first preference was
to head towards a town called Pucon where another volcano lies- Villarrica.
This is a popular tourist spot and has about 300 people a day going up it. The
issue with this plan was that Villarrica is still an active volcano and at the
time of our trip was on yellow alert due to volcanic activity and was closed to
anyone trying to get near it. So without the threat of molten hot lava we
decided to go for the more local volcano (there’s a lot of choice in Chile!)
and signed up for an overnight hike to the summit. You read that right, I
signed up for a hike- clearly misreading the title of the expedition, which was
labeled “Osorno Volcano Climb”- I was quite the way through the expedition
before I realized this mistake!
To give you a real
inside account of our journey, here are my minute by minute blog entries from
the climb-
Monday 23rd February
19:00-
collected by our guide, Matias, he and his brother run the climbing company we
are going with.
19:03-
fitted out with our gear- trekking boots, trekking pants, checks done to ensure
we’ve adequate warm clothes. He seems a bit paranoid considering it’s just a
little hike….
21:00-
Arrive to the base of the volcano, got some super photos of sunset. Getting
pretty excited now
21:15-
during dinner Matias explains that we’ll be up at 4am to start the hike so that
we can get to the top by 1pm at the latest. They do not allow summit attempts
after that time. Allowing 9 hours for the walk seems pretty excessive- does he
not know how fit we are?!?
21:45-
Strange, we were talking with Matias and another guide and we asked how do you
know when to just turn back from the walk? The answer- “oh we’ll know by the
look on their faces”. This was following by two evil laughs from the guides. I
laughed too- don’t think that joke applies to me. I’m well able!
Tuesday 24th February
04:00-
it’s still pitch black outside. Why are we getting up at this time again?
04:45-
Breakfast done, off we go barely able to see in front of our feet. Isn’t this
some sort of health and safety issue?
05:30-
onwards and upwards eh, seems to be a lot of upwards left. Thankfully the sun
has risen to give us some company and to make walking that little bit easier
06:30-
it doesn’t feel like we’ve made much progress…….
07:00-
Progress! We’re at the edge of the glacier. Hard bit done.
07:05-
Crampons on. Walking stick and ice axe out ready to go. The ice axe certainly
seems a bit excessive. What are we going to be doing? Climbing up a cliff face!
Oh please
07:54-
man, walking is so much easier without having spikes clamped around your feet.
They may give you grip but they hurt like hell.
08:16-
this ice axe on my shoulder makes me look so cool
09:03-
surely the view from here is as good as the view from the top?
09:41-
I can’t believe we paid to do this!
10:30-
On the positive side, we can see the top. On the negative side, I don’t really
understand how we can go any further. Anyone up for calling it a day!?
10:45-
Reliably informed that we’re 120m from the top. How long could 120m possibly
take?
11:00-
well we’re certainly not walking up this volcano. On all fours, kicking
crampons in with each foot, hitting ice axe as hard as you can to get it to
stick in and then pulling myself up. I’m not sure this is what I signed up for!
11:10-
see 11:00, rinse and repeat!
11:20-
so tired! Upper body strength was never my calling card!
11:30-
this is pretty dam vertical. If I wasn’t tied onto Matias with a rope I’d
really be panicking!
11:33-
did I ever mention, I’m not that comfortable with extreme heights?
11:40-
how long more can this go on? I thought he said 120 metres not miles.
11:45-
I’m the king of the world! What a view. 360 degrees all the way around.
Breathtaking.
12:30-
lunch done, what do you mean we’ve to go down the way we came?!?
13:00-
abseiling down is so much easier then climbing up. Once someone invents a way
to abseil up a volcano, I’ll definitely do this again!
15:05- Crampons
off. Oh the relief. Wearing shoes has never felt so good!
17:00-
we deserve a drink after that! (END ENTRY)
Meanwhile Aoife’s blog
extract:
Monday 23rd/ Tuesday
24th February- climbed to the peak of Osorno volcano, 2,860m high.
It was awesome, once in a lifetime experience. Brian looked wrecked doing it but
he got there in the end! (END ENTRY)
So here we are world
travellers, chartered accountants, volcano conquerors- Impressive résumés! What
a day, though, absolutely amazing. We found out that only 300 tourists a year
get up the summit- on the day we were there only one other person did the
climb. That feeling of sitting on top of the world by ourselves (but with a
helpful guide!) was priceless. I’m not going to lie, it was the toughest thing
I’ve ever had to do. So tired after it and missing a number of toenails but
totally worth it. Definitely a highlight of our trip. Every drop of sweat made
the view at the top all the better. Never seen anything like it. Will we do it
again? Hmm, I’ll get back to you! 
Using Puerto Varas as
our main hub was perfect- nice little seaside town. Only issue we had was, when
we arrived on a night bus into the town early on the Sunday morning to be
greeted by a ghost town. Not a sinner in site. As we walked down through the
town, one by one the local dogs decided that it would be fun to follow us
through the town. So like the two pied pipers of Hamlin we proceeded through
town with a convoy of ten stray dogs walking behind us! Those of you who are
familiar with our comfort level with normal dogs let alone stray South American
dogs will understand where our heads were at and will definitely understand why
the executive decision was made to detour into the Radisson hotel (don’t worry,
we didn’t stay here) to try and get away from them………. 5 star hotels, our
salvation from stray dogs, it’s a changed world we’re living in!
With our southern stop
done, it was back on a few buses to head north again and up beyond Santiago to
Valparaiso. The city itself is much smaller then Santiago but boasts a
labyrinth of streets and cobblestone alleyways protected as a UNESCO World
Heritage Site- what makes them so famous is that loads of the houses on the
hills surrounding the city are painted in different colours. We later learned this
was because when the ships were docked for repairs and repainting, they’d leave
the extra paint on the docks. People would grab whatever paint they could find
and paint their houses. The colorful houses have become a Valparaiso trademark.
In addition to this, over the years, the locals have coloured the streets with murals,
paintings, DIY art on every corner. Fantastic to see and it has turned into a
wonderful tourist attraction with new artwork seemingly being added all the
time.
After that, our journey
north continues with a bus to La Serena. The highlight of this was a trip to an
observatory. As the city is surrounded by desert it has been a main place for
building observatories for 50 years with many to choose from. In line with our
preferences we chose a tour, which incorporated a night of Astronomy and
Gastronomy- it’s like they designed it especially for us! So as we sat under
the starry sky and learned about the solar system we also availed of wine (they
also owned a vineyard) and snacks. I really do have all the romance moves down
pat! A great night, looking through the telescopes was incredible, the amount
you could see with the naked eye versus what you could see through them is
amazing. I found it easier to not to think about some of the explanations we
received- my head would have exploded otherwise, for example looking at star
clusters that are 14,000 light years away. KABOOM!
The final stop in Chile
was to San Pedro de Atacama, it’s like a scene from the Wild West- you expect
to pass a saloon or a gun fight at noon every time you turn a corner! The main
business of the town is tourism and on every street you’ll find a large
selection of tour companies eager to show you the sites in exchange for the
pesos in your pockets. After doing the necessary research we picked out two
trips to do- one to visit Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) and the second
is Geyser del Tatio. Both tours were fantastic and they were a real cherry on
top of our visit to Chile.
Moon Valley was some of
the weirdest landscapes we’ve ever seen- named obviously due to its resemblance
to the moon but to add to its weirdness, large amounts of the rock is also
covered in salt giving it all a white tinge. Certainly never seen anywhere like
it.
Geyser del Tatio is a
large area of geysers at an altitude of over 4,200m- the highest geyser field
in the world. Very impressive site with geysers periodically going off every
few minutes. While in New Zealand they set off their main geyser each morning
as part of the tourist shows, these were all natural and were just doing their
own thing. The big bonus of this over New Zealand was the lack of rotten eggs
smell that hovered around Rotorua where all the geysers were. No dry cleaning
necessary after this visit!
So to finish off our two weeks, a hop into some
natural springs to cleanse myself and get psyched up for our next step which
starts with a bus ride over the border into Bolivia. Stay tuned for updates!
Our route:
Fly to Santiago, night
bus to Puerto Varas, bus to Chiloe, night bus to Valparaiso, bus to La Serena,
night bus to San Pedro de Atacama (bus from Chile to Bolivia)
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