Emu Bay Rhododendron Garden

A lovely trip to Burnie today with my friend of 41 years, Linda. The Autumn leaves at the Emu Bay Rhododendron Garden are beautiful. I even got to use my knowledge of Chinese provinces to help us find our way around as there are Chinese, Japanese, Nepali Bhutanese and North American sections. 

We then went in search of a streetside baked goods stall my friend Sharon had told me about. We can recommend the caramel hedgehog slice! It was yummy and great value at $5 for eight pieces. 

On the way home I had a stop at Anvers for hot chocolate and watched them making their Winter special, chocolate covered marshmallows (not yet for sale) and discovered they're now giving away their samples in little bags. Similar to the bags you get when you buy a takeaway hot chocolate.

I'd never stopped at the Big Spud, so decided to do that and was disappointed to discover no vegetables for sale. 

My final stop was Ashgrove, which Facebook tells me I last visited exactly three years ago. The fancy new building is nice but I miss what it was like twenty years ago when I lived on the NW coast and would often stop in for free samples and discounted offcuts.

Santiago De Chile

I had great plans to do lots of sightseeing in Santiago and have a day trip to Valparaiso but unfortunately my first meal in Santiago, eel and chips did not agree with me so my plans changed.

I managed to fit in two walking tours for tips with Where's Wally guides. They were very interesting but it was sad to learn of all the suffering that occurred during the Pinochet years. Santiago does have some beautiful buildings and it was good to learn more about them.



The main cemetery is very beautiful and treated like a park by the locals. The children's section is decorated for the holidays, though seeing all the deaths from 1972 is a stark reminder of Chile's history.







These door handles, symbolizing people power and recycled in the new arts centre are full of history. Created as part of a community building project for a UN meeting in 1971 they were turned upside down during the Pinochet years, when the building was the base from which many people disappeared.



Unfortunately I also managed to be on a subway train when someone jumped in front of it to commit suicide and experienced my first subway evacuation. But I also had some great times hanging out with the people from my Patagonia tour. And I spent an hour and a half just chatting with a friend of a friend outside a subway station. Interactions with locals, especially my friends, new and old has definitely been the best part of my travels this year.

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Lakes and Volcanoes, Bariloche and Pucon

Bariloche, Argentina is nestled amongst the mountains and lakes of northern Patagonia. It has a distinct Swiss feel to it, complete with whiskey barrel touting St Bernard dogs to have your photo taken with. I wasn't feeling great during our brief visit there but did have a lovely wander around the artisan markets and enjoyed sitting at the lake, despite the pebble beach.



We then journeyed from Argentina to Chile, our last border crossing, via what is considered one of the most beautiful roads in South America.





Luckily as we entered Chile we were able to see the volcanoes around Pucon because it poured with rain for our entire visit and the town was shrouded in mist. As we left on Monday morning the sky cleared and we finally saw the famous Villarica volcano again. It meant for a quiet but fun weekend, with a walking tour of the city, fancy thermal pool visit and a fun almost end of tour party.

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El Chalten to Bariloche, through the steppes of Patagonia

Two 12+ hours days of driving through the steppes of Argentina took us from El Chalten to Bariloche. Even seeing cattle or sheep was rare. Though we did see a few guanaco, an animal similar to an alpaca.



Day one had three highlights.

One we stopped to help a guy broken down on the side of the road and ended up towing him 60km to the nearest town. It must have been quite a sight as the big yellow Tucan truck drove through the town towing a local estancia owner in his dual cab ute. We got even more stares than normal.

Two, the enormous sandwiches served at our afternoon toilet stop. Each slice of bread was equal to at least four regular slices.



The third was when our driver and tour leader pulled over to help a guanaco who was stuck on a fence.

The rest of the day consisted of knitting and sleeping. I made some Christmas decorations for the truck. Which the driver, Ritchie has said he likes so much he will keep them for his next truck. An amazing compliment as he told me stories of tearing down Christmas decorations previous groups had made as soon as their tour finished.




Day two had three highlights, a hot lunch, every toilet stop being at a flushing toilet and having a little step ladder to get up into the truck (both due to a lady with some mobility issues joining the group on El Calafate, I miss ditch toilets).



We're now in the Lakes District of Patagonia, which is what I expected most of Patagonia to be like, very green.

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El Chalten, Argentina

On Sunday morning we drove four hours to El Chalten. It's a small town created in 1985 to stop Chilean border encroachment and as a haven for hikers and climbers in the summer. As we drove in we had beautiful views of its most famous peak, Fitz Roy.



However on Monday we finally experienced true Patagonian weather. Most of the 22km hike was in okay weather but on the steepest part (where we climbed 400m in 1km), up to the viewing spot we encountered sleet and strong winds. Hence our lunch time view was rather cloudy and lunch was eaten very quickly.



As we headed back into town the weather cleared and views became much clearer. I was lucky enough to have a large condor fly right in front of me at one point.

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Perito Moreno Glacier, El Calafate, Argentina

Yesterday we crossed back into Argentina and travelled to El Calafate. Where we gained four new people to join us in our journey north to Santiago. For dinner I had some beautiful roast lamb, almost as good as 'Homewood' lamb.

Today we did a day trip to Perito Moreno Glacier which was amazing. Photos don't show how large it is, 60m high and it goes back for thousands of kilometres. We were lucky to see lots of 'calfing', small icebergs falling off.







On the way back Mary, Larry and I stopped off at the Ice Bar. Twenty minutes of -9.4℃ and all you can drink. The temperature reminded me of doing yard duty in Colorado.

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Spectacular Torres Del Paine National Park

Words and photos simply do not do Torres Del Paine justice. We were blessed with three days of incredibly clear weather, the wind on the second and third was strong but I still mostly hiked in shorts and a t-shirt. Our hiking guide, Isabella from Poland led us on two long hikes and several short ones. Tuesday we had a very challenging hike, about 20km up and down steep tracks, with a final ascent of 300m over 1km to have lunch underneath the towers themselves. Wednesday we visited a waterfall, then the icebergs of Grey Lake and the Condor lookout and Thursday after taking the ferry across Pehoe Lake we hiked about 15km of the French Valley, which was only steep from th fee Italian Camp, where we watched avalanches as we lunched.

There were three things which surprised me at the park. I had no idea the park contained the third largest ice field in the world and hence I would be able to be a few metres from huge icebergs. This was a major highlight for me. The second was the dead forests as bushfires here mean the trees are dead and there are no new trees unless replanted by humans. Smoking is now much more strictly banned than it used to be because of a huge bushfire started by an Israeli hiker who burnt toilet paper in the middle of the forest. But that said the huge park only had 35 rangers this season. The sheer number of people in the park also amazed me, particularly doing the Towers walk we were constantly giving way to other hikers. When we got to the lake for lunch there were at least 100 people there and there were constantly people coming and going. Up to a 1000 people a day visit and there is talk of a permit system and increasing the park entrance fee (about A$35).

We camped inside the park in a privately run area complete with flushing toilets and hot showers. Kim and Ritchie,our Tucan tour leader and driver, cooked yummy food for us as we hang out around the campfire. We decided it was definitely "glamping".

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