Some of Chile

(one of my  SDcards caught a virus somewhere - I believe in the Loki hostel in Lima and now it cannot be read, so that's why I only have some of my photos from Chile.
...and none from Bolivia - oh, boy...next post will be difficult. There's a warning for you.)
    So, Chile:
Chile is grey.
this is at least my impression, not a very objective one, since I didn't see the great reservations in the chilean Patagonia... But Osorno , Santiago, La Serena and San Pedro de Atacama... kinda grey-ish

     I reached Osorno at noon and luckyly it stopped raining. It has been raining all the way from Bariloche and my luggage was soaked from being disembarked at the chilean border. Aparently Chile guards very strictly its biological purity so people were not alowed to bring in even the organic products they had in their lunch bags. God forbid an argentinian appleseed should fall on chilean soil!
So Osorno :

 not much really, just a tranzit town with cute wooden houses, cool street art and quite expensive coffee... I managed to see all the 'atractions' in about 4 hours before taking the night bus to Santiago
  Here I stayed with friends (thank you again Andra and David) and this is the view from their balcony:

I did go up the San Christobal, but I didn't take many pictures - the internet is full of them sort.

but I've discovered very surprising sides of the city, like this out of time street:

 some peculiar shops:

oversized and damn good street bands:

a muddy, tired and heartbreaking melancholic river

 melancholic streetart, on the river banks...

and some not-so-melancholic street art

I've first seen an learned how to do an Ecoladrillo : 

 all in all Santiago is a metropole ... with it's ups and downs

     I walked a lot , but also had time to rest and at the end of three days I took another night bus, to La Serena. This little town by the ocean was a bit of a surprise. The weather was kind of particular: cloudy till about 4PM then all of a sudden the skies turned clear and the sun shone bright. Every day the same, I was told from the hostel.
    So on the first day, as I arrived early, I dropped my luggage and took a minibus to the Elqui Valley, of which I've heard from a local I traveled with on the bus. Aparently the sun was to be found there.

         Here should come some pictures of the beach in La Serena,  and some pictures of Coquimbo... when I'll be able to access them.
The beach itself is sort of ok, the sand is rather grey, but the South Pacific water is terribly cold and there were dozens of dead gelly-fishes being washed ashore ... don't know why, but that definitely ruined swimming for me.
         I just thought of visiting Coquimbo, the adjoined little town, on the 3rd day, before taking the bus to San Pedro de Atacama and I was immediately sorry I didn't stay there instead of La Serena. It's a lot less touristy, and it doesn't have a beach, but a fishing harbor, but is a lot more picturesque...
        I made it to San Pedro de Atacama next day at about 11 am, after a 17h ride, instead of 14, with TurBus, which should have been direct, but we changed in Calama anyway because the car had a problem... For being the biggest and most expensive bus company in Chile, they were a total disappointment.
      San Pedro is lovely and there's a lot of things you can see and do around - it obviously lives of tourism, but here is where I first time had bad luck with the weather : it rained both days. I blame the British couple with whom I shared the hostel room. So the only thing I could visit was the Pukara Quitor - the pre-inca ruins, and that only after crossing bare-feet through a red-mud river that just appeared over night (Atacama is a desert)
       Actually it was kinda nice to just hang out with people in the hostel, thing that I usually don't get to do if I'm just touring and tracking and moving from one place to another...
I also managed to find direct transfer to Uyuni from San Pedro - contrary to what I read on the internet, that one has to go to Calama, spend a expensive night there and catch an early bus...
       Everything went smooth until the bolivian border, where I had to pay 55$ for the visa that I didn't know I need. Apparently Romania is still in another group than the rest of the UE countries. And that's just for Bolivia!

Patagonia

... oufff where to begin ?
On the 2nd of January in Buenos Aires  was pouring rain - it was starting to flood and I was afraid the plane won't depart. But it did.

 and 3 hours later I was 2000 km south in El Calafate

      I stayed in a sketchy hostel, which was not a hostel at all , but a camping with dorms, and I shared one of the dorms with some sketchy fellows... I guess they were good guys, but kinda smelly. So I was out and about as much as possible. It was funny how I had to explain to the lady at the reception what people expect from a hostel - like the use of an equipped kitchen - since they are listed as a hostel on hostelworld...
       I booked a guided trip to the Perito Moreno glacier for the next day and also booked my bus to El Chalten for the 4th and the bus from there to Bariloche on the 5th. And as everything turned out to be more expensive than I read on the internet, my argentinian pesos cash was running very low. It was clear that I will have to exchange more dollars, and the exchange house in El Calafate was operating the official rate (6 to 1)...
       But! on the Perito Moreno trip there was the boat or no boat option. I told my guide I had no pesos for the boat and asked if I could pay with a Visa card. She told me they would take dollars and give me the rest in pesos at a very good rate - 10 to one!!!  and so they did! My problem solved. By the end of my patagonian stay, I realized I had miscalculated with more than 100 dollars.
       So the glacier

That was pretty much what Calafate is all about. El Chalten on the other hand is a little jewel of a trekking resort, surrounded by mountains

        I arrived at about 11 AM , dropped my luggage at the hostel and up I went! In jeans and running shoes, with a 'purse' and a shopping bag - the ultimate gringa. Well - that is pretty much the outdoor gear that i have with me, since Patagonia was not in the plans for this trip. I was very amused to hear the comments of the 'hardcore' trekkers - with their Vibram soles and their windstoppers and their trekking sticks... as I was passing them.
The track I did, and I suppose all of them are really well layed-out and taken care of; secure, clean and constantly reminding the tourists to be respectful with the nature - I haven't seen a bottle cap on the ground.
It also had the aspect of a quest-game scenery with different realms or levels
- 'the call for adventure':

 - 'the point of no return':

-'the path in the unknown':

 - 'the lake of sorrows':

 -' the tree graveyard':

- 'the garden of lost memories':

 - 'the dragon's bridge'

-'the dwarf forest'

       If this would have been a real hero's journey, the goal would have been to climb the Fitz Roy. But as it is not, I am happy to have arrived at the 'Laguna de los Tres':

When I reached the peak a bunch of people went up cheering. Turned out they were looking for somebody to take a group photo of them. It was a pretty fun moment.Then I got my photo also

 ... and back again.
When I looked on the map to see where I´ve been, I realized I did 25 km in about 5 h. Go me! I knew my legs will be sore the next day, but there was nothing I had to do, except sit in a bus for two days on the way to Bariloche.
The 'legendary' Route 40 is a terrible bore... just pampa... for hours. A lama or a few were to be seen ever now and then - and everybody was getting excited.
Or even some horses - in a strange statuary group stillness...

 And after two days of this... Bariloche! The swiss town of Argentina

 Here I stayed in Couchsurfing with 'Peter Baggins' - not his real name, but so suited to the scenery... A lovely experience, I was really taken care of.

        On the first day I went to the Circuito Chico - the one you can do on foot, or better on a bike. It seemed again that I was running out of cash after buying my ticket to Chile, and as there was no paying with the card at the bike-rental, I meant to walk the circuit (after all there were only 28 km - piece of cake!) But there was Martin who came with the same bus from town who offered to pay for my rental :) In exchange for the same when he'd come to Berlin. So I had a bike and a partner for the day (not entirely, cause he gave up in the middle of the trail)

       A strange thing - it seems that I am extremely lucky with the weather... when I looked on the internet, there was fog and rain announced for Patagonia in the week I planned to spend there, and everybody told me the weather had been bad up to my arrival... Also as I left Bariloche it started to rain and it rained all the way to Osorno/ Chile. But as I walked  out the bus terminal - the sun came out!
I am very grateful, I hope I don't jinks it and it keeps up this way :)

Next - Chile!