Quito - The Centre of the World
After dashing about in Chile for the last 3 weeks, we decided to slow down a bit when we arrived in Quito, the capital of Equador. We´ve been here for 5 days now, and feels like we´ve done pretty little..
Quito has a reputation for being somewhat dangerous. Even while I was researching for this trip back in Australia, I have heard reports of people being robbed in Quito, and in particular, the following travel story of a guy who got robbed twice stuck to mind (http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/06-02/if-only-all-thieves-were-this-stupid-quito-ecuador.html) so I felt pretty nervous about coming to this city. The following warning from Lonely Planet further increased our anxieties.. ¨... in Mariscal Sure (near our hostel), knife and gun holdups are regular occurrences at night... always take a taxi after dark, even if it´s only for a block. Do not walk around any park after sunset..¨
I think I've successfully passed my fear to my travel buddies, and we´ve encouraged one guy to grow his beard and to practice looking tough. Unfortunately he smiles too much, and I think I can look more threatening than him :( The other guy is pretending to be my buddy guard, but is more than likely to run the other way when the trouble comes.
Quito is a pretty big metropolis, spread out to the nearby mountains. The city is divided into the ¨New City¨ and the ¨Old City¨, where the former is more westernised and geared towards the backpackers/ tourists and the latter is where the locals live. The Old City is full of beautiful colonial buildings, much of it reminded me of Prague or Italy, and is a UNESCO heritage site.. It has quite a character.
Volcano - part 1, a pretty bland introduction..
How can I begin to describe the amazing adventure of yesterday, when we climbed up a beautiful, snow-capped volcano?
We have been here in Pucon for 4 days now, and will leave for Santiago on a night sleeper bus tonight. From there we will fly up to Quito in Equador, thus concluding the Chile part of our trip. It´s been a fun, activity-packed 3 weeks, when we roamed from one place to another, by bus, by boat or by plane. It was quite easy to travel around in Chile, most of the places we go to are accessible by major bus companies, and it has also been quite safe - we haven´t encountered any robberies ( though one friend has a pair of pants stolen from his backpack while he left his luggage at the hostel unlocked) and most people have been fairly honest and trustworthy ( though the other friend was conned by a taxi tout at the santiago airport, and paid a whopping $150 for a taxi from airport to the city, 4-7 times the usual price! This can happen anywhere in the world, but he blammed it on his jetlag on the first day, and being unaccustomed to the exchange rate. My other friend and I wouldn´t let him forget about it though :)
So many funny moments in the trip, in different settings and with different people. We started the trip as a group of three (2 girls and 1 guy), and one week and half into the trip the other girl decided not to do the expensive boat trip and took a different route ( with some cute european guys! understandable I guess..) then we met up with another friend after the boat trip and the group dynamics changed again. Our previously harmoneous group became somewhat chaotic, as the fighting begins between the new member ( a pretty good friend) and I. It´s a source of endless amusement for the other friend and for anyone standing by, but not for me!
However, the other guy is a bit of a pretty girl chaser, whose answer to just about everything in life is ¨as long as she´s pretty!¨. I once compared his simplistic approach to life to that of Homer Simpson, and he refuted.. ¨just because I like pretty girls and to watch lesbians doesn´t mean I´m simple...¨Not long after, he confirmed that most of his guy friends and one girl agree with his mentality and doésn´t see a correlation between being voyeuristic and simplistic. What do you think? Bear in mind that ¨pretty¨and ¨lesbians¨comprises of 49 percent of his conversation content...
My two travelling companions are like polar opposites of each other. If one is ying then the other yang. One chatty, the other reserved chattiness for pretty girls only. Hence he´s been quiet the whole trip, almost. He blames it on his sore throat, be we know better! The chatty one is more stubborn sometimes, whereas the other one is easy going, as long as there´s a pretty girl around the corner, or at least the promise of one. It´s a study in human nature to see how two guys can be so different. (okay, the last two paragraphs were added because one of my travel buddies read my entry and said it's too bland and needs more juicy stuff.. so here it is ;)
Anyhow let´s get to Pucon. It is a beautiful town, set amongst the mountains, lakes and volcanos. It´s considered part of the lake district in Chile and in summer time, it´s a tourist / backpacker haven. After the boat trip, we spent a brief two days visiting the island of Chiloe, which has an unique island charm of its own, with lush, unspoilt forests and cute colourful ¨paddlepop stick¨houses by the seaside. Our search for penguins at Chiloe was not entirely successful, as low tide prevented us from reaching the penguin island by boat, but we did spot them using a telescope and binoculars from a nearby beach. Nevertheless, we all fell under the relaxed island spell of Chiloe, and was a little sad to wave it goodbye.
From Chiloe we took two buses to get to Pucon, and arrived at 11pm at night. Luckily we´ve already booked for an accomodation using a guidebook, and the lady running the homestead came to pick us up from the bus terminal. She´s a middle-aged woman from Switzerland, been living in Chile for 10 years and now spent her time running the house, looking after her two kids and at the same time teach Spanish classes and also do massages. We got along pretty well, especially my chatty friend who was happy to find someone new to talk to. Her kids are also very sweet, especially the little one, who is ten and have just started to learn English. We spent hours talking to her, looking up our Spanish phrasebooks and attemping some conversation. We pointed out pictures of Koala and Kangaroo from her illustrated animal book, and also found out one of my travel companion, whose grew up in NZ but lived in Oz for over 16 years didn´t know what a wombat look like. He pointed to a picture of a fruitbat and said, ¨that´s wombat right?¨
Just before I left for South America, a good friend gave me details about her Chilean friend whose Dad is living in Pucon. She was very enthusiastic and emphasised that we should definitely get in touch. So we did, and found ourselves wandering through his beautiful property in the outskirt of Pucon, which he purchased about 3 years ago in order to build his dream house, guesthouses and campsite for his visitors. Harold is an evangelical Christian who lived in Australia for over 30 years and only recently returned to Chile after all his kids have grown up. It was his passion to be back to the place of his childhood, and he wanted to build a place to show its charms to his visitors. From his place you can see several mountains, though there´s probably more because our view was somewhat blocked by the clouds and haze that day. Harold took us around his property, and we saw a half completed log cabin with three bedrooms, his plans for the campsite, the beginning of the toilet and shower block for the campers, and the massive garden of trees and flowers that he started to plant. It was pretty inspiring to see his dream in progress, and he invited to come back in a year´s time if we can, and see it in its completion. After several hours in his property, he took us to a nearby National Park which is also a popular tourist attraction in summertime. Though it was windy and raining slightly, we saw a massive lake in our first stop, then ventured into the forest and spent hours walking around more lakes, waterfalls, and trees. There was one place called the ¨Eye of lake¨which is where two streams running underground from the lake, came above ground and joined together as waterfalls. We took lots of pictures!
The day after (2nd day in Pucon) was the day we saw the sun. And the Volcano Vallarica for the first time. It was visible almost everywhere you go in Pucon (even from hostel), and certainly inspired many people to sign up for the Volcano hike for the following day, including us. I was drawn by the possibility of a beautiful view and photos from the volcano, and of course the challenge and the possibility of an adventure. But I was also shit scared... My treking experience in Patagonia hasn´t exactly filled me with confidence, since I was one of the slowest walkers out there and even people with huge backpacks could overtake me. I remember huffing and puffing all the way in the Torres De Paine, trying hard to keep up with my friends, and wishing I had done more cardio classes before I came. So signing up for the volano trek seemed a brave and dubious move...
We were told to get plenty of sleep the night before, and to carry enough food and at least 1.5 litres of water. The shopping for food part was fun :) We roamed around a huge supermarket and planned what to bring, what to cook for breakfast, and all that exciting stuff. Unfortunately we didn´t get much sleep because the chatty one was chatting...
Adventures on Navimag...
We just got off the Navimag boat, and it was an interesting experience. We were sharing the boat with some livestock, as it is still being used as the cargo ship.. the livestock is on the bottom level, in crammed open air cages and we are on the two higher levels, also crammed. The boat itself was pretty small, prob carrying around 100 passengers and we got a small one this time because the normal one is under repairs. Apart from the deck and the bridge, the cafeteria and joint lounge areas are the only common areas, and because it's a small boat, only one side of the common room has windows! Life onboard was super lazy and slow most times, and our daily pattern oscillates between getting up, eating, watching movie and sleeping.. and occassionally looking outside from the windows if the weather permits. Unfortunately we only had clear weather the first day on board, and the later days are all abit hazy, windy or cloudy. It's funny because many of the passengers are backpackers who in the previous week tackled the challenge of treking in Patagonia for 4 to 10 days (we only did an easy 2.5 days) and now onboard there is nothing to do but vege out. Well, may be that's why it's so popular. But after a while I feel like I´m part of the livestock, being feed aplenty for what's yet to come!
There are some funny moments onboard, like during a movie session, a whale sighting from someone in the cafeteria next door caused everyone to run out of the lounge to the nearby window, and yeah, i got to see the tail (?) of a whale from a distance.. horray! I also disembarked at an island along the way (Puerto Eden) for a quick one hour exploration. It was populated by indigeneous people, however, as we arrived at 7:30 in the morning, all the locals were still in bed and we ended up visiting an empty town...
Anyway it's nice being back on land! My friend complained that he ate so much during the boat trip that it gave him stomach for the last day and half. I'm just happy to be walking about again :)
Begining with Patagonia...
Just a quick hi from Patagonia in South America, as the night is getting late and we have another early start tomorrow. We´ve just returned from a 3 day camping trip in Patagonia, where we spent the last two days hiking amongst the grand ice-capped mountains. Yeah we were a bit crazy to chose to camp in this weather, but anything to save money you know! Every morning I wake up to the sound of the wind howling outside the tent, and imagine our tent in the middle of the wind tunnel, and us being the test subjects. Thank goodness to the warm sleeping bags. The scenery was dramatic and well worth the effort, but I feel so unfit amongst the fellow campers, who carry huge backpacks and battle the elements to walk from one camp site to another. We chose the easy option of basing ourselves in the same place and return to it every night. And in the morning we find our food has been rat attacked!
Can´t believe it was just over a week ago when I finished work and struggled with the house and trip packing. I´m having a great time, will write more later and hope to hear from some of you!
