The Graffitic Wonders of Valparaiso

Right now we are somewhere over the Pacific Ocean off the Coast of Lima heading for Guayaquil en route to Quito.

We had an amazing time in Valparaiso. We arrived at Santiago airport and managed to get a return ticket on the Centroaeropuerto bus (the other is TurBus), which dropped us off at the Pajaritos bus/metro station just in time to catch a Pullman bus to Valparaiso. We drove into the sunset along a long straight turnpike crossing the coastal hills in two long tunnels arriving an hour and a half later at the Rotavaria bus terminal after which we caught the first city bus that pulled in along Puerto Montt and then O'Higgins to the Lider Express supermercado, where after some figuring with the road signs dragged our luggage up steepish Cummings to the wildly chic Casa Verde Limon the house of the green lemon, adorned with commissioned art in situ and crowned the most atmospheric hostel 2009 by hostelworld.

Verde Limon centre in green.

It had a cavernous four-storey high central enclave for a living room with individually decorated doubles and dorms, and three keys - one to open the gate to the alley that linked the building between Cummings and the street below, one to get in the side door and one to open the deadlocked bedroom which had a huge six foot wide bed.

Living room and our double

Exterior views

After picking up some food from Lider, we ventured out in the night and took the local ascension the crazy little near vertical cable cars established in Valpariso at the turn of the 20th century up to Cerro Conception, one of the precipitous hilltop neighbourhoods that overlook the harbour.The entire region is a case of art overtaking life. Basically graffiti has taken over and taken the artistic lead so that all the buildings either sport grafitti or are painted in contrasting pastel hues. The entire neighbourhood has this odd mix of run down desolation combined with avante garde bohemian cafes, bars and a few odd churches, a castle and a few absurdly narrow buildings built in the wedge between steeply winding streets.


In the morning we retraced our steps ascending by one ascension and later descending on the other side by another, taking in the sweep of the city from the heights and scuttling back mid-morning to pack and retrace our steps on the local bus, the intercity bus, and the Santiago airport bus, only to find we had misread the departuere time and given ourselves a two and three quarter hour wait before boarding for Quito and losing the camera among the luggage in the process giving myself near apoplexy as well as having a slightly sore tooth and Christine having a bloating varicose vein driving her balmy. Nevertheless, despite the brief time we were there, we had a really good experience of the famously quirky flavour of Valparaiso.


Valparaiso has provided the funky urban cultural complement to the natural environment of the passes and the resort and ski towns of the Lake District.

Back Across the Andes by Tromen

Lago Laçar panorama (click to enlarge)

We had a good rest day in San Martin spending a chunk of the morning going hiking up the hillside from the town, which is nestled in a side arm of Lago Laçar, so you can't really see the lake. The forest is full of yellow and red deciduous trees giving a rich autumnal glow although in June it is well into winter.

The Puma hostel was a great place to stay and like all the other Argentinian hostels had good cooking facilities and the bidet which is ubiquitous in Argentina, as in France, although so far absent in Chile


Yesterday we got up in the pitch dark and made a bee line for the bus station about 7 blocks south and five blocks west in time to catch the San Martin bus company bus to Pucon. Strangely the other competing bus company Igi Llaima also ran a bus out to Pucon at the same time rather than on alternate days as in the Lonely Planet.

Two hours later it was still pitch dark with a starry sky as we reached the border with Chile, but since the border formalities seemed to take at least an hour an a half with slow queues to stamp the passports and everything taken out of the bus and X-rayed on the Chilean side, including seizing all our fruit and vegetables it gave a chance to see the pass in the daylight.

Volcan Lanin

On the left Volcan Lanin reared eerily and gradually became a white snow capped almost perfect cone as the sun rose.


The border was snowy but nowhere nearly as extreme as the previous pass, partly because of the better weather.


We then wound down through alpine valleys with farmlets and small towns to Pucon, a Chilean ski resort on Lago Villarica opposite Volcan Villarica another active snow capped perfect cone pushing its way above the clouds on our first peerless day in Patagonia.

Volcan Villarica over Pucon harbour and Lago Villarica

We are staying alone at "The Tree House" the best option in what is a very expensive if pleasant resort town described as the Queenstown of Chile, which says something for NZ Queenstown's questionable international notoriety.

Two gigantic items in the supermercado, (left) giant pinones (right) giant kelp

I've also managed to internet check in on the internet and have boarding passes with window seats on the Andean side of the planes for both the flight tomorrow back to Valparaiso and the LAN Chile flight next day on to Ecuador.

Today, as I write on a free WiFi link courtesy of Entel, we are sitting in Temuco airport after a misty-rainy drive by bus from Pucon and a slightly risky transit at the Cruce del Aeropuerto a motorway crossing out of Temuco where if you are lucky, (and we were lucky) a lone taxi driver may be waiting in the drizzle to ferry you directly to the airport. At least my Spanish is good enough to negotiate these connections! Boarding in four minutes for a flight back to Santiago airport and a double bus link to Valparaiso.

Riding the Snow to Argentina

Today we got up again at the crack of dawn to pack, having been awoken by a torrential rain storm characteristic of Patagonia, swallowed down some coffee and tea and a couple of buns and headed out dragging our luggage out of two a few blocks to the bus station and to our delight found it was indeed the place where our Andesma bus for Bariloche and Buenos Aires pulled in 20 minutes later, at 8.55.

Are these remnants of the primeval forests of Chile still standing in the fields?

The bus drove south through flat country with farms with paddocks bearing what looked like scattered remains of the original trees from the low land forests.


It headed onto Osorno which had some quaint somewhat run down houses and slightly tacky neighbourhoods like the ones we saw in Puerto Montt.

Orsono buildings

It then headed east winding by Lago Puyehue and up into the forest of the National Park, climbing higher and higher until we reached the outgoing Chilean border post.

Lago Puyehue

Rather than entering striaght into Argentina, the road continued to wind up steeply through the forest until it began to snow and just when we thought we had passed to the other side, it continued to climb away into the snow line with a constant blizzard sweeping the road, leaving almost all of the heavy vehicles apart from the bus stationary waiting for the snow plough to make the road passable. The bus ground on very slowly in low gear managing to make its way to the summit and then very gingerly down the other side.

The Samore pass is the most icy dicy I have been over (click to enlarge)

As we came down the snow gave way to mist and then sunshine and we wound between steep show-clad peaks rivers and lake-filled valleys. After crossing the Argentine border post, we reached Villa la Angostura around 2.45 counting an hour shift forwards entering Argentina.

A rainbow over Lago Naguel Huapi

We dragged our luggage trolley up muddy side streets full of potholes finally reaching the Hostal Angostura after almost losing our way. This is a bit of a wild west mountain town reminiscent of Taos New Mexico. Only the main streets in town are paved, although it has a swathe of luxury hotels and the Hostel is the only remotely reasonably priced place we were able to book on the internet. Actually its great service becauwe they have given us a four bed dorm to ourselves with a private bathroom, so in a way its the best deal so far, and very warm with under-floor heating so luxurious.

Christine at the Hostal

Tonight is the first night we have been able to just swoon out without having to set the alarm for an ungodly hour. We have so far found the ATMs incomprehensible. They only speak Spanish and seem to offer a bizarre range of possibilities including deposits, funds transfers but so far all have refused to issue any cash, so I'm glad we brought enough cash to cover all contingencies.

Montains above Villa la Angostura

Closing the Circles

The Chile-Argentine Circuit

The last ten days have been spent closing the circles by making internet bookings for transport and accommodation favouring chic budget backpackers who have good internet access. In the first loop around the lakes district of Chile and Argentina, we fly Sky Airlines from Santiago and plan staying at Casa Margouya in Puerto Varas, advanced booking on Andesmar to Villa la Angostura where we have beds at Hostel la Angostura, and Puma Youth Hostal in San Martin de los Andes, where we hope to take either the Tromen or the Hua Hum Pass back to Chile, hopefully reaching the Tree House in Pucon before returning north via a flight back from Temuco. San Martin has a very complete multi-lingual site with all these passes.

Green Accommodation

We have also booked for accommodation in the cities we fly into at night, Hostal Forestal in Santiago, the chic artistic Hostal Casa Verde Limon in Valparaiso, l’Auberge-Inn in Quito and the quaintly traditional Hospedaje Casco Viejo in Panama City.

The Ecuador-Colombia Circuit

After this we decided to explore bookings in the Ecuador-Colombia circuit because we have it to make through to Cali to catch the COPA linking flight to Panama and found some racy backpackers with internet or e-mail reservation and booked Hostal Transilvania in Banos, Hostal Rincon del Viajero in Otavalo, HostelTrail in Popayan and are waiting for e-mail replies from A Welcome Break in Tena and Hotel San Sebastian in Pasto.

Please also note that the old main bus terminal in central Quito has been replaced by two new ones on the outskirts, one serving north to the border with Colombia and the other south and most other areas, including Amazonas. We found it very difficult to find bus schedules and companies going the north route to Tena until we found this site, listing the bus company contacts and departure times for Quito-Tena via Baeza. Note that by October 2010 the old Mariscal Sucre airport will be replaced by a new one ten times the size 18 kms out.

The new Quito terminals (blue and red) and the abandoned central terminal (gray)
with local bus/trole links, showing Mariscal Sucre airport mid right.

We also clinched a few key bookings for a Budget rental car at midnight in SF airport, to add to those we have on arrival in Dublin, Rome and Avis Amman because they have an office at the Allenby Bridge. We also booked some further afield accommodation close to times we have to make a plane or ferry connection - Chicago Getaway Hostel, Camping Tiber in Rome, Solfataria in a geothermal field near Naples and several gypsy stops en route to a night at Carpe Diem in Brindisi before we catch the ferry to Corfu. There we have a choice of Dionysus Camping on Corfu and Elena and Kalami Beach at Igoumenitsa, depending on where the ferry stops first in the evening, and on via Delphi (Apollon) and Athens (Camping Athens or Hostel Aphrodite) to Crete.


We also did a rather ingenious thing using Google Earth, prompted by a neat camper van free camping web site called Green Archipelago - Arcipelago Verde - which had a Google Earth file showing the locations of free parks across Italy and neighbouring countries. This led to our own aerial search using street view for discrete free camping hideaways where we could park the car and put up a small tent on small side roads adjacent to wilderness areas while driving across Italy.

Now all we have to do is gather our medicines, international drivers licences, and some foreign currencies and pack! No just kidding there is heaps to do!