hy guys,

arrived yesterday in argentina, in bariloche ... a nice village in the northern part of patagonia ... but back to chile, where i spent 3 weeks and a couple of days ..

after the desert tour i enjoyed one day of doing nothing but cleaning the clothes (ok i braught them to a laundry service and got it back 6 hours later ... for 3 euros *g*) and hanging around in the hostel, where i met clare and caroline again from the tour ... decided to visit Valparaiso together the next day which is a small town 110 km northwest of Santiago ... so the next day we met at 9am, and the two girls met 2 other irish girls in their room, which they only saw 9 months ago in India at a big night out ;) ... so i had the pleasure to drive with 3 irish and 1 british girl to Valparaiso ... from the very first minute we had much fun together, made a lot of jokes about the our nationilities and laughed the whole day ... Valparaiso was once a very important harbour in Chile and this city is built into the steep coastline so that there are lots of inclined lifts to go up ... we walked through the city, had a quite nice boat tour and had a chill out evening in our hostel ... the next day we went by bus to Vina del Mar, which is also called the twin city of Valparaiso ... Vina del Mar is more "posh", there are some castles, they have a beach and they even have a Moai statue in front of a museum ... so, i don't need to go to easter island to see one of these great sculptures (i went to the LAN office - the only airline which flies to easter island - and they offered me as cheapest flight a 950 us dollar flight ... they are crazy!!) ... so, we walked again the whole day through this little town, even had a dog, which followed us the whole day (i think, one of the girls didn't shower and the dog liked the smell ;)) ) ... then we all had a common experience: our worst meal in chile :) ... this was really disgusting, but i was so hungry that i ate it anyway ... we arrived in Santiago in the early evening (as the weather was not that nice) and had a nice little hostel party ... 2 girls (Trudy and Noel - i called her Santa Clause, as they called me german!) went with 2 gays in a gay club and told us next morning they had real fun there ... don't want to know what there happened (Trudy said, Noel shagged a girl there, but she argued that .. so nobody really knows) ... Clare hat fun with a swedish guy, the next morning we all made jokes about her new love :) .. so all in all, it was a nice party evening, the next day Clare, Caroline and me wanted to take the bus to Pucon (10h busride south) .. we thought it will be ok, when we will arrive at the bus station 30 minutes before the departure of the bus to buy the ticket ... so we grabbed all our stuff, took a taxi and then had bad luck, as all buses were sold out for tonight ... so back into a taxi, back to our hostel were we had again bad news ... hostel was sold out for tonight, so we had to look for an other option, which we luckily found just around the corner ...

the next day we were more clever and bought the ticket in the morning to have our fixed seats :) ... the overnight bus to pucon was quite comfy, and we arrived at about 8:30am in pucon, where it was freezing cold!! Clare went with flip flops ... CRAZY IRISH :) ... we got little lost in pucon (although this is not a big city) but finally ended up in a nice hostel called Victor, where it was cosy warm ... but our room was quite cold, but that's normal in CHile, there is no central heating, you can feel lucky if the living room has a good heating, which this hostel had ...

Pucon is a nice little town, very clean and has a big volcano in the back ... we decided to try to climb this volcano, but our guide warned us, that this will be really hard work ... but at least, the weatherforecast was perfect, only sun, no clouds, only few wind ... in the evening i watched the sub20 football game austria-chile ... was quite surprised about our team :) ...

next day, 6am wake up ... brrrr, fu**ing cold and pitch black outside ... 7am meeting point in the agency to check out our euqipment, and at 9am we were at the starting point ... took the chairlift for the first part of the track, and then started at sealevel 1400m to climb the volcano (peak is at 2800m) ... but unfortunately, we didn't make it to the peak, it was really hard, the end of our trip was through soft snow, though it was much harder as on compact snow ... and it was getting more steep too .. so we finished at 2pm, as we had to go down which will also take about 2 hours ... going down was funny, we slided on our bottoms ... and as an emergency stop we had an ice axe ... so after about 2 hours we were back again at our starting point, a little disappointed that we didn't make it to the top, but we were 2 hours away from the peak, so we were much too slow ... climbing the volcano in winter is much harder than in summer, because of the snow condition ... anyway, we had a good exercise and an awesome view over the lake district ...

in the evening we were thinking about going skiing the next day, moreover Clare did never ski before, so this was a must ... if our legs would not hurt too much :) ...

so, the next day we decided to go skiing, Chris (an aussie guy) joined us and Caroline, Chris and me tried to teach Clare in skiing ... was harder than i thaught ... Clare had really no experience in skiing and no idea how to turn or stop ... but luckily, this skiing region was quite easy, the slopes were very flat and so Clare managed till the end of the day to turn and also to stop .. and in getting up after a fall, she was perfect :)))

after 2 sport days, we were all quite tired, so our last evening together was just a nice dinner (had again an excellent lasagne, like in san pedro) and fall to bed early ...

on wednesday it was time to say good byw ... Clare and Caroline headed back to Santiago and i wanted to go to Bariloche the next day ... again 11 hours on the bus ... (when i come back, i will count all the hours which i spent on buses during the last 6 months :) ) ... so, yesterday i went over the andes, where is a lot of snow, but the street is cleaned ... Bariloche is quite nice (so far i can say after one day), looks like an alpine village in austria or switzerland ...

so, enough for today, i'm looking forward to sunday, as there is the copa america final between argentina and brazil ... will be a big party time here :)

cu in few weeks back in austria
christoph