9 days, 4 countries, 1 robbery

The last few days have involved a lot of travelling: four different countries over the past nine days! There have been ups and downs, with one particular down occurring when my bag was stolen as we went from Peru into Ecuador - more on that to follow. Returning to Chile and Argentina gave us a chance to reflect on all the countries we've visited so far. So in this blog entry, at the end of each section I thought it would be nice to sum up some of our feelings on each country.

One of the hikes around El Chaltén with my family, in Patagonia

We ended our last blog entry still in Argentine Patagonia, from where my dad and sister flew back home to the UK. Kev and I then made our way back to Punta Arenas in the south of Chile. We had some time to kill in Punta Arenas, so we made use of this by checking out the outdoor shops there. Turns out 3 years and 20 plus countries is too much for even the toughest hiking shoes, so we both reluctantly purchased new ones.

The harbour at Punta Arenas - taken when we first visited earlier this year

Argentina: worst food in of all the countries we've visited (apart from the good steak!); excellent Malbec; friendly people; weird Spanish accent; crazy dual exchange rate due to crazy inflation; super expensive buses; amazing Patagonian scenery.

Chile: favourite country so far - fantastic wine at very cheap prices; Spanish accent almost impossible to understand; volcanoes by the dozen; gorgeous, rarely visited national parks; some of the best day hikes ever; food nearly as bad as Argentina but improved by seafood; crazy long thin country (very long bus rides!)

At Conguillo National Park earlier in the year - one of our favourite places in Chile

As we boarded our flight to Lima at midnight, we wondered what had possessed us to pick this ridiculous flight time. After a turbulent flight from Punta Arenas up to Santiago, we groggily had to change flight at 4am and finally arrived back in Lima, Peru at about 7am. We spent the next couple of days staying in a pleasant Air BnB recovering from our flight and not doing much. As you may have gathered from previous posts, we've not been overly inspired by Lima. We did however return to our favourite craft beer bar, and to the cat park of course, and also finally went into the cathedral.

The tomb in Lima cathedral of Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of the Inca empire

From Lima we took the longest bus journey of the trip so far (19 hours) up to Máncora, a small beach town on the north coast. For this bus journey we'd chosen the luxury option - all meals provided, private TV screens, and seats that reclined 180 degrees - so the time went surprisingly fast! Getting off the bus in Máncora, we were hit by the heat. This is the first time we've been anywhere genuinely hot since the start of our trip, and I was finally grateful for all the summer clothes I've been carrying around for months. On with the shorts and flip flops!

The beach at Mancora, with fishing boats in the distance

Máncora has a different feel to the rest of Peru. The streets are mostly unpaved and dusty, there are tuk tuks everywhere, the beach is lined with bars and the roads with souvenir shops. There are people everywhere trying to sell you stuff, and more than your average number of scams. We felt like we'd returned to south east Asia! After a couple of nights here relaxing on our balcony, with the occasional 'swim' (read 'splash around in the shallows' - the waves were pretty big!) and plenty of time spent in bamboo beach bars, we were ready to head on up to a new country - Ecuador.

Peru: best food of anywhere in South America so far (ceviche especially); delicious pisco sour cocktails; most places especially in the South are very touristy; incredible history and archaeological sites by the dozen; our least favourite capital city; great hiking; excellent craft beer selection.

At Choquequirao in Peru - amazing history, amazing hiking!

As I mentioned, Máncora is full of scams. One of these involves bus companies. We'd been warned to make sure we bought our tickets to Ecuador from the actual company itself, NOT an agency. Easy, we thought. We're travel savvy! Wrong. The company we bought the tickets from was an agency masquerading (very well) as the official bus office. We discovered this when we found out we had to get a minibus to start with and then change to a bus at the border, which is exactly what you are NOT supposed to do. But it was too late to change plan by then.

Colourful hill in Guayaquil, Ecuador, near where we were staying

The minibus dropped us at the bus office at the (very gritty) border town. We went to the window to get our tickets sorted, and had our bags on the bench next to us, literally a step away. I took my passport out of my rucksack to hand to the woman behind the desk, and when I turned around 30 seconds later to check on the bags, I immediately noticed my small rucksack was missing. We both ran out into the street but the man had disappeared. Some people in the cafe next door had seen him running and we ran that way but couldn't find any sign. There were some local police on the next corner and they immediately searched the area themselves on a motorbike, but no luck. We left our details with them but I think it's pretty unlikely we'll ever get that bag back.

Cathedral in Guayaquil, Ecuador

The one good thing is that I did not have my passport in the bag, having taken it out a few seconds before. Most of the items that were in the rucksack are replaceable, but it's very frustrating as there were quite a few things of financial value (phone, backup hard drive, Kindle, raincoat, etc) and many more of sentimental value. Sadly these things happen, and we are still berating ourselves for letting our guard down for that one moment. We read later about how some tourists have been held up at gunpoint outside that very same office, and others kidnapped nearby. Maybe we got off lightly.

View of Guayaquil, from a lighthouse up a hill near where we were staying

We arrived late that day in the city of Guayaquil, our first stop in Ecuador. It's Ecuador's largest city (though not the capital), very hot and humid and located on the coast. Guayaquil is an interesting place - it used to have an extremely bad reputation, which didn't inspire us with confidence arriving here after the robbery. However, the waterfront area where we're staying has had a recent makeover and is now very nice and very safe - there are armed police every hundred metres or so!

Ecuadorians just getting on with normal life, in the iguana park!

We have spent the last couple of days shopping to replace the stolen stuff and filling in insurance claim forms, as well finding time to see one of Guayaquil's main attractions - a small park in the centre that is full of iguanas! Most importantly, we've been researching Galapagos cruises, and are excited to say that we have now booked an 8 day trip starting on the 28th November. The cruises are very pricey, but this is something we knew all along was unmissable, and we've managed to get a very good discount by booking last minute from within Ecuador.

Iguana and pigeon!

First impressions of Ecuador: bad food, friendly people, very hot at sea level, very green (lots of banana plantations!); football mad (like all of South America).

We leave here soon to spend a few days in the highland city of Cuenca, before returning to Guayaquil to fly from there to the Galapagos.

Oh, and though we haven't been there recently, it's not fair not to include Bolivia in this post - so, Bolivia: least Westernised country; lots of indigenous influence; crazy country with half at 4000m altitude and the rest at 0; highest capital in the world; cheap; too many incidents of food poisoning; insane cliff edge bus rides.

Up at 4900m at the El Tatio geysers, in Bolivia in June

That's all till next time!

Rural Chiloé and a Volcanic Eruption

Our original plan from Punta Arenas was to proceed back to Puerto Natales and then take a four day ferry up to Puerto Montt, significantly further north in Chile. However, the boat schedule turned out not to be in our favour and we were faced with the choice of a 32 hour bus journey or a two hour flight. It didn't take us too long to decide!

We were lucky to be able to get on a flight the very next morning and after landing in Puerto Montt headed straight to Ancud, in the north of the main island of Chiloé. Chiloé is an archipelago of islands off of the west coast of Chile, and was one of the last places remaining under Spanish rule before finally becoming part of independent Chile in 1826. It is famous for its fertile soil (and wet weather!), its folklore and its iconic wooden Jesuit churches.

The beach at Ancud, with the volcanoes of Osorno (left) and Calbuco (right, before it erupted) in the distance

We had a day exploring Ancud, which is a quiet town with a really beautiful seafront. The museum was all in Spanish but informative about Chiloé's history - plus it had a blue whale skeleton on display. We watched the sunset over the bay from Fort San Antonio, one of the last Spanish strongholds, looking over the sea with the mainland and surrounding islands in the distance.

Some of the sunken forest

We decided we'd like to see some more nature so spent a couple of days at a homestay in Chepu, a tiny settlement just north of the Chiloé national park. Chepu was very rural and a welcome change for us. It was really just a string of farms spread out along a couple of dirt roads, set in picturesque hilly scenery. We had a long walk one day to Playa Aulen beach on the west coast, where we watched huge waves rolling in from the Pacific Ocean. En route we saw a sunken forest. This surreal spectacle was created by the earthquake and tsunami here in 1960, which caused the ground to sink 2m.

The farmstay

The Chilote family we stayed with were incredibly friendly and welcoming; we felt like part of the family and were very well looked after. The home cooking was incredible - on the first day we were served a three course meal with fresh seafood soup, followed by roast ham (from the farm itself) with homegrown potatoes and tomatoes, and then creme caramel. The second night our portions of a meaty local fish, cooked beautifully with lemon and tomato, were so large that we could barely manage half each! We had the rest for lunch the next day. All this for incredibly cheap and we got a lot of practice with our Spanish as the family spoke no English.

The beach near Chepu

The rolling hills around Chepu

During early evening on our first night at the homestay we went for a short walk and noticed a very dense looking cloud. Later on we discovered this was no normal cloud but the ash cloud from the eruption of Volcan Calbuco, near Puerto Montt. So far we have been lucky not to be affected by this but flights have been cancelled, nearby villages to the volcano have had to be evacuated as they are 50 cm deep in ash, and there is a strong chance the river might flood. We'll stay in Chiloé for now...

The volcanic cloud from Calbuco

54°S

When we spoke last, we were in Ushuaia, a claimant to the southernmost city in the world. Since then we've been in the actual southernmost town, Puerto Williams. We took a small zodiac boat across the choppy Beagle Channel - the last of the season - before a truck for the 54 km along the only road to the only town on Isla Navarino.

The brave crew for the boat to Isla Navarino

We spent our time hanging out with the other two tourists in town. Handily, one was a physiotherapist and subjected me to an intense massage to sort my leg out. It seems to have worked - we managed to do a couple of excellent hikes on the island.

Puerto Williams and the Beagle Channel

The Bronces Waterfall

The first was to the Bronces waterfall, and the other to the peak behind Puerto Williams, Cerro Bandera (Flag Hill). They both gave a real sense of how isolated this place is - from the complete lack of other people to the number of birds that came really close to us. Cerro Bandera provided fantastic views of lonely Puerto Williams and the Beagle Channel beyond. We could also see the famed peaks of the Dientes de Navarino, if only from a distance. Of the few people that come here, a small number brave the 4-5 day trekking circuit in complete wilderness around these mountains. We decided to give it a miss this time!

Los Dientes de Navarino

After three days at the real 'end of the world', we caught the weekly ferry back to Punta Arenas. The 30-hour journey started more-or-less on time, until 10 minutes in it returned to port to pick up a lorry that had missed it. Strangely, one of the other lorries that had initially departed with us drove back into town and didn't return. The voyage was bumpy in places, but at other times we managed to see dolphins and seals against a glacier-carved backdrop.

The ferry back to Punta Arenas

We're now back in Punta Arenas where we're pondering our next move. It can only really be somewhere further north!

Tierra del Fuego

Tierra del Fuego was named by Ferdinand Magellan when he explored this area in the 1500s. Sailing past the island, he saw the smoke rising from the fires of the native people living there and thus called it 'Land of Smoke' - this name was later changed by the Spanish King Charles V to the more exciting 'Land of Fire'.

The end of the road

We arrived on the island by boat from the mainland, with dolphins jumping all round us, and then had a bus ride of several hours down to Ushuaia in the south. While Tierra del Fuego is now home to a population of nearly 150,000, it still retains its feel of undiscovered wilderness, with an air of mystery and enchantment. Driving through the island, gazing out at the beautiful mist clad mountains, lakes and forests, it felt otherworldly; I have rarely been so strongly affected by a place.

The mountains rising behind Ushuaia

Ushuaia is quite a touristy town as most Antarctic cruises pass through here, however it is also a working port and nearly half of Tierra del Fuego's inhabitants live here. There are two main museums in the town, both of which we visited. The first is based in the old prison building and is HUGE, attempting to cover maritime history, the prison's history, Antarctica and local art all in one. Although we enjoyed the model ships and the opportunity to see the original prison cells here, there was really far too much information, most of it dry and irrelevant, and we gave up after two visits feeling somewhat brain dead!


On the other hand the second museum, about the Yamana indigenous people, was excellent. We learnt a great deal about the native people and their plight after the arrival of the Europeans. In the 1830s Captain FitzRoy of the Beagle thought it was a good idea to bring four native Fuegians back to England, supposedly to educate and Christianise them. The four were given the names Jemmy Button, Boat Memory, Fuegia Basket and York Minster. In a similar vein, British missionaries travelled to Tierra del Fuego in the 1870s to establish a settlement and 'educate' the indigenous people. As a result of the spread of hitherto unknown diseases, sadly nearly all the Yamana and other local tribes were wiped out.

Tierra del Fuego national park

A beaver dam on the way to Laguna Esmerelda

In addition to Ushuaia itself, we have enjoyed getting outdoors. Tierra del Fuego national park was stunning in its autumnal colours, and we also managed a long walk to Laguna Esmeralda. The latter trail was more of a bog than a path but we enjoyed the challenge (and got completely covered in mud!). We also saw several dams built by beavers, as well as the destruction they'd wrought in the forests - trees reduced to stumps, and others in the process of being gnawed through. There was plenty of other wildlife to see in the national park, birds especially - my favourites were the white throated tree runners, which as you can guess from the name run up and down trees, tapping with their beaks like woodpeckers.

Laguna Esmerelda

We'll be leaving Ushuaia tomorrow for Puerto Williams, the sourthernmost permanent settlement in the world. The plan is to then take a ferry back to Punta Arenas, then a second ferry from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt along the Chilean fjords.

Although Ushuaia claims to be at the end of the world,
Puerto Williams (our next destination) is further south

Port Hunger and the Pit of the Devil

We ended up spending quite a long time in Punta Arenas, one of the candidates for the title of southernmost city in the world. We'd arrived at the start of Easter weekend and, Chile being a devoutly Catholic country, almost everything was closed.

Punta Arenas was founded in 1848 as a way to safeguard the Strait of Magellan for Chile and is the oldest city in Patagonia. We visited the site of the first settlement here, Rey Don Felipe, established by the Spanish in 1584. It started with around 300 settlers but they struggled with the harsh conditions. The sole survivor was picked up 3 years later by an English privateer, who renamed the place Port Famine, or Puerto del Hambre. It is now marked by a rather odd monument to the 'geographic centre' of Chile, as Chile claims ownership of part of Antartica and this point lies halfway between the north border of the country and the South Pole.

Braving the conditions at Bulmes Fort

Nearby is Bulmes Fort, founded in 1843 as the original site for Punta Arenas. This was slightly more successful than the Spanish colony - it lasted for 5 years on a windswept and rain-lashed peninsula before the whole settlement was moved 50 km along the coast to the current site. The fort was left to ruin, but has now been restored to its former glory using timber stakes. It was easy to see why it had been abandoned as we explored it in the horizontal rain.



We used Punta Arenas as the base for a trip to Pali Aike national park, 200 km away on the border with Argentina. It's home to a volcanic outcrop, which provides a fascinating contrast to the bleached Patagonian steppe with sudden black rocks and large cones in every direction. The rock formations are particularly intriguing - there is no erosion by water and the wind forms lots of weird shapes. We finished our visit by scrambling into the extinct volcano crater itself and peering into its depths.

The volcanic formations in Pali Aike National Park

We've now left Chile for Argentina once more, to a city that's even further south - Ushuaia.

The Crater Morada del Diablo (Devil's Pit) in Pali Aike National Park

Into Chile

We arrived by bus in Puerto Natales on April 1st. This was our first international bus journey, crossing from Argentina into Chile. Border crossings are always interesting, and this one took quite some time. Getting out of Argentina was easy enough, but at Chilean immigration we all had to get out of the bus and retrieve our big bags (sacks in our case) from the back so that it could go through the X ray scanner. Although there were two desks for checking passports, only one was designated to each direction. So, while one had a queue of a busload of people, the other watched MTV.

A dry-ish moment in Puerto Natales

We spent a couple of days in Puerto Natales, mainly sheltering inside from the freezing winds and snowstorms. But our main reason for coming was to attend one of the daily talks at Erratic Rock hostel, all about Torres del Paine national park and the famous W trek. This was extremely informative (highly recommended if you visit this part of the world) and useful in helping us plan our future itinerary. The local beer on tap was a bonus! We now think we may end up having to come back to this trek at the start of next season, when the weather is better, more places to stay are open and Kev's leg has recovered.

The Strait of Magellan at Punta Arenas

Not letting the cold deter us, we pushed on further south to Punta Arenas, arguably the southernmost city in the world. The other main claimant is Ushuaia, which is further south but smaller. We're pleasantly surprised by how nice this city is - lots of grand buildings and history relating to various early Antarctic expeditions. Plus the weather has been good - we're not missing the horizontal freezing rain we'd heard about. We've also purchased some crutches so that Kev can walk around without using his bad leg. This combination of weather and crutches has allowed us to go for walks along the seafront, with lovely views over the Strait of Magellan to Tierra del Fuego. There are also burnt out piers filled with cormorants and gulls. Most things are closed over Easter, but we plan to make use of the duty free shopping area to replace some of our petrol damaged gear.

Imperial cormorants and dolphin gulls