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Hello! At the moment I'm in a place called La Serena on the Chilean coast, I've got a bus to catch up to Atacama, unfortunately it doesn't leave until 1.30 am tomorrow morning, so I've got a bit of time to kill, which means I can update the blog. I'm about 4 weeks behind so the following entry is really just a collection of things I can remember from this time which was spent in Patagonia.
After flying down to Ushuaia, the world's most southerly city and hotbed of Falkland Islands (Malvinas) protest I joined up with the tour that I had booked for the part of the trip from Ushuaia, through Patagonia to Santiago. This seemed a good idea as Patagonia is not the easiest of places to get around and with the time I had I didn't really want to be hanging around for buses for days (as I'm doing now). The journey was on a converted truck with a group of about 20 others. It was quite a diverse group with all ages and people from a range of places, which made it interesting. Over the course of three weeks we stayed in various hostels as well as some nights camping, which was good fun. There were a couple of drivers / trip organisers as well. Now I don't want to start banging on about Donny again, but this is one of those 'it's a small world' moments so I have to mention it. It turned out the group leader was from about a mile down the road from where I was brought up. Although we didn't go to the same school, she's only a year older than me so we knew a few of the same people, she also used to work in the Cumberland (my local) and we also worked at the same place for a summer job. Further proof that Donny is in fact the centre of the universe. This did however give proceedings a bit of an odd quality at times as quite often you'd be talking about Patagonia or the local people or something and then make a reference to Donny. I'm sure that can not happen very often.
In Ushuaia we visted the Tierra del Fuego National Park and had a guided tour where I learnt some interesting tidbits such as the fact the local indigenous people were nudists. That's right they didn't wear a thing, not even tactfully placed figleaves! In order to ward off the cold the people lathered themselves in seal fat and I imagine they got through quite a lot because in that part of the world, temperatures are often sub-zero with winds in excess of 100 mph. Now I've always considered naturism a slightly eccentric lifestyle choice, but in these conditions it's just downright barmy! Still, it clearly worked for them as they survived for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans who brought with the unfamilar disease and within 100 years the local indigenous population had been wiped out, which is a very sad end.
Moving north, I visited Torres Del Paine National Park where I did the `W´walk, so called because the route is in the shape of a W. Actually I lie, I missed off the first part of the walk. Earlier in the year some idiot burned down half of the national park by setting fire to toilet paper, the fire quickly got out of hand. This first part of the walk is one of the worst effected areas so I decided to give it a miss. Therefore my walk was more like the 'backslash immediately preceding a V' walk, which I'm sure you'll agree doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Anyway my version of the walk took 3 days staying overnight in refugios which are like hostels but about 4 times more expensive ($6 can of Coke anyone?). Despite the cost it was still well worth doing and the refugios were really good for meeting people. The torres (towers) can be seen in the picture at the top of this blog (for once the template has let me select a picture of a place I've visited). After Torres Del Paine we moved onto Los Glacios National Park which is full of...you guessed it...Glaciers! In this period I looked at glaciers, took boat trips to glaciers, trekked on glaciers, climbed up glaciers and any other glacier related activity you care to think of, but that was ok because I quite like glaciers. I also climbed a volcano at Pucon which was amazing, although I have to say the highlight or certainly the most fun part was sliding down the volcano on some toboggan runs which had been carved from the ice. I'd have been happy to pay my 50 quid just for this!
The time in Patagonia is definitely a highlight of the trip so far. It's amazing how remote you are, you can go hundreds of kilometres on the main highways without passing through any settlements and there are some truly stunning landscapes. I think the experience was also helped by the relatively benign weather we had. Patagonia is well known for it's windy and changeable weather, but in the time I was there, it was pretty good most of the time. The conditions were actually pretty similar to what you expect in England, changeable but never getting too cold, which was good when camping. In the last week I was in Santiago for 3 days, which had pretty much shut down for Easter and I've had a couple of days in La Serena. The plan now is to head up towards Bolivia and then into Peru.
PS Sorry to beg, but I'm still looking for sponsorship for the Keswick to Barrow walk. All money raised goes to a number of good causes, a full list of which can be found here: http://www.keswick2barrow.co.uk/charities.asp?ID=533 My sponsorship page http://www.keswick2barrow.co.uk/sponsor/welcome.asp?ID=1093 Many thanks Joe
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Bob Kerr Great blog Joe and I can say I'm mighty jealous of the places you've been to and the things you've done. A geographers dream.
Sue Falp You can take the boy out of Donny, but............