Matt & Rob's Big Trek

Hey there, peeps. Last time out we were in Santiago. Took a bus up to Los Andes as A) we’d been in Santiago a long time and B) it is all motorway between the two and often it is forbidden for us to walk on them. Think this one would probably have been alright in the end but it would have been shit so hey-ho and nothing much lost there. From Los Andes it was a different story…

DAY 1: Last night we’d sat and watched one of the biggest storms of our trip from the safety of a hostel. Raining big fat cats and very angry dogs plus thunder and lightning flashing and crashing like it just didn’t care. Our guide says if it’s raining then the mountain pass will be closed for snow so I’m pleased that today there are blue skies overhead. We head off directly for the mountains, fresh snow on the top of them. Los Andes is soon behind us and we begin to weave closer to the great rocks. I’d been apprehensive but now I’m stamping my feet with excitement to get up there. Not much of a rise today though. We find a kind of stony tip area just off the road to set up tents. Nice. Think about using one of the discarded mattresses lying around…but nahhh.

DAY 2: It was warm last night so no need for Big Orange. Starting to rise up a bit today as the road sews it way around the sides of the mountains, heading up the river valley which is awash with muddy waters (not the musician – he wasn’t there) from all the recent rain. Got to use the water filter for some of it but it’s good to see so much running water after some very dry spells in north Chile. Trucks are our main company but a coach load of oriental gentleman are taking pictures from a viewpoint and come rushing over to have their photos taken with us. Nice to think that I’ll be part of someone else’s album and experience. The road is getting better, a gargantuan snake of a thing that curls on as far as we can see, and now always rising…We pass a sign that says thanks for your visit to Chile. I hadn’t properly considered the fact that I’ll be leaving for the last time. I go to say the same to Matt but I choke on the lump in my throat. It’s been fantastic here; a wonderful four and a half months. Thunder and lightning again now. I HATE being out in a tent in this. Just hate it. It’s hard to cook in my porch with all of my fingers crossed.

DAY 3: Happy birthday to me! And it is a glorious start. So sunny and clear after yesterday’s storms and there is a random portaloo just near where we’ve camped. Ace! But the day gets better. Soon we hit las curvas, 27 curves in the road that take you right up into the mountains. The climb is amazing and the view just wonderful. Half way up and the air is getting really cold in the nose when I breath. After the curves is another 3 hours walking right up to the paso and tunnel Cristo Redentor at something like 9,000 feet up (3,100 metres). We’re leaving Chile now and the view back is magnificent. It gets cloudy again but it can’t diminish the experience of getting up here. The woollies come on. At the tunnel two custodians take us through in the van as it is dangerous to pass through on foot. He asks our nationality and laughs when we say English: “On the other side there is a sign that says Las Malvinas are Argentinian,” he says. “That’s fine by me,” I say. And then we’re through and into Argentina. A stunningly miserable chap stamps a bit of paper and says customs are 15kms down the hill. It is bleak up here but a little shop sells us birthday wine and we camp just down the road. I am shaking with cold as we cook and for the first time ever my rice is freezing cold by the end of the bowl. Time for Big Orange!! Yay! In Los Andes we both bought extra sleeping bags, the last the guy had, and now it comes into play. I can see why the chap still had mine unsold; it is enormous. “No one’s that big in Chile,” Matts says. “Who would he sell it to?” It’s great. Later on I am awoken by an earthquake and rocks falling. Just a short ten second affair but brilliant and a great way to end a very memorable birthday!

DAY 4: Oooh, it was cold. The two sleeping bags were just enough though. We drop down through customs and everyone there is smiley and nice and so I am finally glad to be back in Argentina. Even more so soon as the scenery turns truly magnificent, the Rio Mendoza trickling down the right of a vast valley through the mountains. It is epic. We see Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Andes, looming over the others, its top encrusted with snow and ice up there at 18,000 feet or so. After condensed little Chile the scale of it all is overwhelming. Fantastic!

DAY 5: We’re running low on food and there is a road sign that points to a place not even on the map about 18kms away. We have rice but nothing for lunch so decide we can make it there before then. Matt says it’ll be a nowhere place, like those we passed yesterday; outposts and Gendarmerie huts only, but I hold out hope. We get there, to Polvaredas, and find a tiny restaurant. Wahoo! Have the first milanesas (stewing meat fried in bread crumbs) in 5 months and they are delicious and well needed. A man next door sells us big dense loaves of bread from a sack in his shed. It’s not bad. We eat dinner on the mining railroad tracks that have followed us right over the Andes. It’s a shame they haven’t got it to work again yet as it is a feat of engineering. The giant, red mountains stare at us as the evening star starts to glow back over Chile.

DAY 6: A long day in the hot sun. The scenery remains as magical as ever. So big. A crazy cyclist going the other way lifts his fist to us and shouts a glory-filled “Wahooooo!” as he speeds down one of the few uphill slopes we have to go up. as we descend. “Good luck to him,” I say, as the rest of the way he’ll be pushing that bike uphill. No towns or anything today, just tunnels and precipices and that old Argentinian friend the wind. In 5 months we’ve not really had to deal with it but back here it is simply always windy. It sucks for pitching tents, especially as pegs don’t go too well into rock.

DAY 7: My inner tent zip is broken. What an arse. It’s been threatening to go for months, one fastener having already snapped off. It stays a third zipped up but that’s it. Will have to get clothes pegs the same as Matt has had for a month or so. Happily we seem to be out of mosquito season, or it’s too cold or high. We soon hit Uspallata, the first real town in Argentina on this road and it is charming. I remember why I liked this country so much when I was here before. They have just pretty places to eat and drink and the grill man is cooking away on a huge parrilla at the back of a restaurant. We have a beer to celebrate the return then regret it as all the shops shut before we can buy more supplies. In Chile they work all the time. No siestas for shops so we’d stopped thinking about it. Now we have to wait 4 hours for the store to open again. Boooo. It finally does and we head out of town, south now, and still descending through the mountains.

DAY 8: Not much happens today. More descending through the valley. It still looks nice but not so epic now. It’s bloody windy, though. Stupid wind.

DAY 9: Walk down the river valley which soon opens out into a great lake and a small town Petrorillas. They normally sound the ‘ll’ as a ‘sh’ over here so try and say that town’s name. Go on; it sounds silly doesn’t it?

DAY 10: Finally the Andes spit us out onto the great plain of Mendoza. As we look back they look huge and I’m proud to think we just climbed through them. The plain is dry and seemingly devoid of any towns, only vineyards and you can smell the delicious Malbecs in the vats. Gorgeous. We have no food though, and no drink. Argentina is very large when you’re on foot. Because of the water situation we decide to make this our biggest walking day of the whole trip and finish 23 miles or thereabouts, only to find that the town we are heading for is still an hour up the road and it is already dark. We find a trough with some water in it for filtering and sleep right next to the busy road, vowing that tomorrow we are going to eat and drink a lot.

DAY 11: We take the old road to Mendoza, shops and little outskirt towns all the way. The city is wonderful, as is the all you can eat meat buffet and wine and beer and a warm bed. But I miss the icy cold mountains and Big Orange…

We’ve now walked 2,628 miles folks and these were some of the best! Off to San Juan next.

Cheers.  Love you, byeeeee!

Rob  x x

Yo-ho folks! Over 2,400 miles walked but the full smiley face is back on now so this one comes with 87% less moaning about walking.
Firstly, a little backtracking: Last time I’d talked about Constitucion and its Star Trek links. These were not true facts. I know, I know, you believed them and I’ve abused some trust there but that’s just the way it works, okay. But Consitucion is famous for its earthquake history. Earthquakes are part of the culture here. There is even a national drink named for them, the ‘terramoto’ (it comes in pints and is made from half a pint of wine plus pisco and rum with pineapple ice-cream so it does to your brain just what the quake does to the earth) and back in 2010 Constitucion was savaged by an 8.8 magnitude shocker. It destroyed many old buildings, the whole seafront and river area were decimated and it claimed many lives including 80 people at an end-of-summer festival on the river island, where now there is a memorial to those who were swept away by the resulting tsunami. The effect on the town has been dramatic and it is etched into every story and every life there as everyone we spoke to would talk of it unprovoked, particularly the charming lady who, when seeing two gormless backpackers standing in the street not knowing how to get out of town, came over and gave us a guided tour out of plain good-naturedness and Chileno hospitality. Thanks lady! So, no Star Trek, but much of the town is now made with stickle-bricks and lego which is another interesting fact.
We escaped from there without a shake and continued up the coast, looking for our next destination, the surfing town of Pichilemu. When people told us it was such I thought, ok, so it’s popular with surfers, but literally everyone there surfs. The road signs are surf board shaped and we were constantly asked if we were there to cruise the big blue. “No, we’ve walked from Buenos Aires,” got either a jaw drop or a look of mistrust : ) It’s a terrific little town, though, and very friendly, especially if you stay in the Hostal Atlantis. More of a shared flat than a hostal, this place was brill skills and was made especially so by Tom and John, NZ and US chaps always keen get on the beers and indulge in some aromo-therapy. Aromo is cheap wine that comes in big bottles; doesn’t need much more to be said than that. Carlos & family plus Lulee the cute foot-biting puppy run the place from downstairs and leave you right alone except to throw delicious barbeque nights. Lulee mostly just bites feet but it’s an important contribution, don’t you think?
Because of the above Pichilemu was hard to leave but we finally managed it after 5 nights. Our route took us all over the place in a half successful bid to stay off main roads and asphalt, going way inland in search of trees (it is getting drier and drier and forests are fewer and further between these days – doesn’t help that they’re always chopping them down) and back to the sea at Matanzas, this time the windsurfing centre of Chile. It looked like the centre anyway: there were 20 or thirty shiny plastic shark fins out there on the silver sea, dodging and tracking in and out and left and right and over the waves and slap! Wipeout! It was nice to just sit there and watch for a while, especially with sand blowing in my face. I’d missed that.
Eventually we left behind the unspoiled areas for the developed coastline, starting at Santa Domingo. Santa Domingo is nice in a ‘Demolition Man’ sort of a way. This is where the rich folk live in their designer houses and green green lawns and parks and quiet little supermarkets. They don’t have camping though so when we got down to the bay at the edge of the conurbation we had to sneak into a big wasteland/tip to sleep, luckily coming across a bunch of trees with a cool, hidden patch for pitching up. As we sat there we could hear the noise from San Antonio across the bay, an entirely different city of industry, engine parts and huge tankers leaving the port. Something that sounded like a machine gun went off followed by shouting and screaming. Glad it was far away. What was not was the ground. That was under my bum and suddenly I realised it was shaking. We were sat around our stoves just cooking away; I turned to Matt and, a little earnestly, asked, “Er…why am I shaking?” It took a while to sink in but we were in a quake! It is the most peculiar experience: there is nowhere you can move that isn’t moving, and it is actually moving! I probably hadn’t given it much thought but I’d lazily considered that the big camera shake in the movies was some kind of exaggerated effect, but you’re sitting there and everything in the world is suddenly jerking from side to side under you. It’s amazing. It went on for about 30 seconds and we heard some days later that it was about a 5.5 so not so bad and no damage done but at the time we were right next to the sea with virtually nothing to stop any following tsunami. When you’re lying there in a feeble little tent that ocean seems to sound louder and louder by the minute. I’d said to Matt before we went to bed, “If you hear anything then make like Wham!” Cue puzzled looks…” Wake me up before you go-go.” But we was ok wasn’t we : )
Valparaiso was next and it sure is lovely. It’s a big port city that spreads up from the ocean all over the steep, local hills and the architecture and feel of the place is like nothing we’d come across so far. At sea level the streets are lined with big European styled buildings, all shops and restaurants and banks, but as you rise up the hill you enter a maze of tiny, curling streets that are packed with beautiful old wooden houses that perch right out over rock faces below. The narrowest of narrow stairs can take you twisting and turning between the levels in true M.C. Escher fashion; there are murals and colours everywhere and every building looks different. It’s great. Because it is a big university town there are also stacks of good bars and there is a big buzz around the streets at night time. Have to say we were pretty restrained considering.
We did a short walk day to neighbouring Vina del Mar which is the big beach resort but we’d hit a couple of rare cloudy days after weeks of the bluest of blue skies so we didn’t even bother with the beach or explore much. We needed a proper rest as Valparaiso had demanded we walk around for hours amongst big hills so probably all to the good. Had a really good night in a hostel there though, so thanks to anyone and everyone concerned (and thanks for the mille pesos, Sean. The beer has been bought and drunk).
Inland towards Santiago was the next leg and inland means hot and hilly. The road we took had us climbing up one mountain for nearly four hours straight. It gave me a shitty headache and when we stopped for lunch I nearly puked in the bushes I felt so feint. And this was nothing. From the top we could see across to our old friends the Andes but up here they are enormous compared with most of those we have walked in so far. These are the big boys coming up, many of them up in the 17-18,000 feet range and the road we have to take is nearly 12,000 feet high. I’m not sure who the planner of this trip is but when I find him I’m going to land one right on his face. The temperature is also set to range between 2 degrees in the daytime to -5 at night so that’ll be nice.
But first was Santiago, right where we are now. I hadn’t been looking forward to this one as pretty much all I’d heard ranged from “I don’t like it very much,” to “It’s just a city like any other.” I was almost happy to leave it alone which goes to show that you should never take someone’s word over matters of taste because it’s been wicked. The place totes rocks. The Bellavista barrio is the bohemian heart of the city’s night life and there are bars and bars and bars, especially on Pio Ninio, packed with revellers almost every night. In the centre is the San Christobal mountain with a cool rail-car that you can take right to the top and get an amazing view of the whole city. Sounding a bit tourist-boardy, aren’t I? Well, we’ve witnessed brawls; we’ve drunk shed loads of booze until dawn; I’ve ended up in a dodgy club where I lost everyone and was miles away from home, only to find I hadn’t and I wasn’t, I was just off the planet. It’s been grand, but mostly because of the company (yes Dee, that does mean you…mostly…well, definitely some ; ). We’re in the Hostal Dominica which is great and I would recommend it to anyone if you like to party but not if you ever propose to leave. It is proving difficult. We were only meant to be here three nights but coming up is our sixth. Should be off tomorrow, though. It’ll be hard as my memories of this place are the best of the whole trip but I think some freezing mountains’ll take my mind off…Here I come, you big shits!

I’m so sorry folks but the net is not letting me add photos. Will try and edit in later.

Ciao for now. Love you, byeee. And get well soon, Chad! Thinking of you.

Rob x x