Coyhaique. Chile 20-21.12.15

We arrived in Coyhaique at around 7pm feeling a little lethargic after travelling through the night from El Chalten taking 3 buses and a ferry to reach our destination.
The bus dropped us off in the town centre where there was free Wi-Fi so we could contact our friend Alejandrina who we met with her father, Carlos and her brother Antonino when they were doing an English course in Oxford.
We contacted them and waited 20 minutes to be picked up to go to their house. While we waited we noticed the amount of smiles and people saying "hola" when they passed by. Maybe they could tell me where tourists with our backpacks and tent!
When Carlos and Alejandrina picked us up we were really happy to see each other again after 2 years apart! We had so much to talk about and of course I ended up being the translator between Carlos and Oli.
On the way to their house we stopped at a beautiful viewpoint. Coyhaique is surrounded by snowy mountains as are most towns in Patagonia.
We drove down a long winding road past a couple of campsites, a native indian made of rock, a brewery and a small football stadium.
We reached the house which is a big wooden cabin on the side of a hill, surrounded by mountains and farms with animals. It has a clear river and the most important mountain is cerro huemules and its good for trekking.
The house is still under construction, done entirely by Carlos so we set up our tent in his living room and slept for the night.
The next morning we went to the city at around 10 am and bought our bus tickets to Tranquilo. We had a walk around a market, looking for an andian coat Oli wanted or a hat. We later met up with Eunice who decided to join us to go to Tranquilo, and came to the bus station to get the tickets. On our way there we met Andrea and Camilo, a couple from Santiago we'd previously met in Chile Chico looking for accommodation. They had come to Coyhaique a day earlier and we spent the day together, went to the Indian stone and the brewery. We later went to Unimarc to buy food for our camping in Tranquilo and parted to meet Alejandrina, Carlos and Antonino for dinner at the fire station. We had the local salmon and it was the biggest piece of salmon we had ever seen!

Coyhaique is not only beautiful, it has a special place in our hearts for the people we have in that city. We will surely be back for a longer period of time.

Puerto Tranquilo. Chile. 22-23.12.15

Puerto Tranquilo is a small town in the Chilean Patagonia with a lot of interest to it. It is a town that lives mainly of tourism but they don't get as much as places like Torres del Paine or Punta Arenas do.

There are basically three main attractions in Tranquilo: the marble caves, the Exploradores glacier and San Rafael lagoon. And the accommodation is mainly camping or wooden cabins, you might find some hostel rooms but there aren't any big hotels.

We stayed at the camping Bellavista, right at the end of the town, past the football field. It costs 4.000 pesos per person, per night and you have wifi, kitchen, common areas and hot showers. We brought our own food from Coyhaique to cook,  toiletries (including toilet roll) and a bunch of cash. The town is very basic so ATMs, money exchange and luxuries as such are out of reach. You can only buy bread at the few bakeries that there are and they are not always open, which sometimes means going around the whole town (about 20 minutes walking) to find some flat round bread, which seems to be the only type they sell.

Up until here you're probably thinking the town is impossible and boring, however it is quite pretty, surrounded by mountains and with a turquoise lake right at the centre of town.

We arrived at around 1pm on the 22nd, set our tent and took pictures around the town while we waited for our friend that we met on the journey from Los Antiguos to Coyhaique to arrive on a later bus from there. After we set up Eunice's tent we then walked 10 minutes and tried to get a tour to the marble caves, the tours are cheaper if you go in a group. Luckily, there was a French girl trying to get a group for the tour too, and in the end we got 9 people in the group, which reduced the cost to only 6.000 pesos per person. 

It seemed as soon as we got in the boat it decided to start raining but we proceeded to travel 15 minutes until we reached the caves. 

The caves, as the name indicates, are made of marble rock and they show beautiful colours of yellow, brown, grey and blue carved by the wind and the water, it almost looked like a fairytale.

As we were moving we saw more and more of these caves, we went into some bigger ones and once, the guide turned the engine off and couldn't get it running again, we were thinking about the cold and wet night on that boat when suddenly the engine worked! We managed to see some last caves and went back.

The way back was worse than the way in, we got splashed with the water and rain and what looked like a little bit of wet hail and we arrived soaked and cold, so we decided to walk back and dry off.

That night we met a Greek couple that have been travelling for 2 years on a motorcycle! Have a look at their blog to know more about it! Worldvespa.wordpress.com

The next day we didn't go to the glacier Exploradores because the cheapest tour we found was 45.000 pesos each, and even though food, equipment, tour guide and entry are included, we still skipped it and decided to do something by ourselves. So we made some sandwiches, we got some fruit, chocolate and water and walked to the centre, from there we took the unpaved road that leads to the Glacier and Lagoon and started walking. Just as we were walking a car went past and we successfully hitchhiked for the first time.

The guy that picked us up was Iram, a tour guide for the glacier that showed us everything of interest along the way, like the lake Tranquilo we were originally planning to see, he stopped several times to let us take pictures and explained us about the landscape. He was stopping at KM21 and two kms further, he told us there was a waterfall, and he didn't only tell us this, he also took us there, going past his house just to help us out.

The waterfall wasn't very big but you could feel the spray from the distance, the water was clear and good to drink and even though you had to go past several obstacles to get close, Oli did and took some pictures.

The three of us (including Eunice) sat to have lunch with the amazing view of the waterfall, had some of its water and started making our way back walking.

On the way back we walked for 5 kilometers without seeing a single car, but 2 kms later we got picked up and taken back to the town, again by people who work with tourists, this time at the San Rafael lagoon. As a payment we got asked to promote their tour. It costs 100.000 pesos with all equipment, transport, food and guide included. (www.turismolosarrayanes.com)

We enjoyed Tranquilo not only for its attractions but also because of the beauty of the place and the kindness of the people. Totally worth a visit if you're around.

El Calafate. Argentina 16-17.12.15

We arrived in El Calafate the 16th in the evening, at around 17:30. The airport of El Calafate is really small and there were only a few stands for tours, buses and taxis. We didn't know what we were doing so we approached the stand of buses into El Calafate city and we were told that to go into the national park we had to book a tour for the following day at 9 am, which would cost us 450 pesos each for the bus to go and to come back plus a bilingual guide. We have never been big fans of organised tours, and we were unsure but we were convinced by the seller that told us we wouldn't find anything cheaper to see the glacier, and she also got us in contact with a camp site as they would pick us up from our accommodation.

We booked the bus into the city and had to wait for an hour and a half for it, since the last one had already left, full of the other passengers in our plane. We finally got on the combi and went to the camping site "el ovejero" where we spent the night in our tent. The camp site was muddy due to the rain and our shoes were covered in dirt, but we found that in different conditions, the camping would have been quite comfortable.

We went out that evening to see the town and have some dinner. The town looks the way you'd expect it to look: tidy and cute and all made to entertain the thousands and thousands of tourists that visit every year. It doesn't go dark in summer until past 10 pm, but it is still windy and cold all day. Regardless, we had some dinner followed by ice cream.

The next day we woke up early, we had to book our next bit of transport with the hotel reception and wait for our tour bus to go to Perito Moreno. The bus was 15 minutes late and after picking the other passengers up from their fancy-looking hotels, we started making our way to the glacier.

We stopped at a viewpoint of the Argentinian lake and got told it was that colour because of the sediments that the glacier left on its recession. We took some pictures there and then went into the national park which cost us 260 pesos per person. At the national park, the van drove 20 more minutes before getting to the front of the glacier.

We were the only ones on the bus at this point, since everyone else got off to get a boat ride in front of the glacier, but for an hour of ride we thought it was a bit pricey.

We did part of the trails marked on the route, but we didnt complete any trails since we were too busy trying to see detachments of ice, which were happening regularly. We stopped at the front and managed to see some small blocks of ice sliding into the water, nothing major. The Perito Moreno glacier is the only one of that range that loses the same amount of ice than it gets every day.

When you get to the Perito Moreno, be sure to have enough cash with you, there are no ATMs at the site or money exchange and there's a restaurant and a gift shop there. We were hungry and had no food with us and very little cash, which was enough for two empanadas and a pack of rocklets, we went a little hungry but we still enjoyed the site.

We were back to the hostel at around 5 pm and left el Calafate by bus.