Moglander's Travels

St. Patrick’s Day on Volcan Villarica in Chile

Posted on March 21, 2013 by sarah

We are now back on mainland Chile, a fifteen minute boat trip took us from Chiloe Island to Puerto Montt, and from here our goal was to see Volcan Osorno (Volcano Osorno) It was really strange being back in what seem to us like a mini ‘Europe’ after the wilds of Patagonia, very posh houses all with lake views, oodles of restaurants, and very expensive supermarkets (all around Puerto Varas). We parked at Lago Llanquihue overnight and enjoyed the company of many people fishing late into the evening and once again early in the morning, but all without success. We were hoping for a salmon for our BBQ! This lake is the second largest in Chile and the third largest in South America.

Sunrise over lake Llanquihue

People fishing at oh-my-god oclock in the morning

The Osorno volcano stands at 2,652 metres tall and its size dominates the whole of the southern Lake District below and around it. We were able to drive high, passing through vegetation , bewildering in its variety and then on to the bare slopes with super views of the lake (Lago Llanquihue). Many people climb this Volcano, but we decided to save our energy for a bigger one!!!. LOL.

Volcano Osorno in Southern Chile. This competes with Mount Fuji in Japan for being the perfect volcano cone, and looking all pretty with its snow cap.

The colors on the lava fields around Osorno are stunning

Long paths over the lava / ash from the Volcano.

Osorno has some woods on the lower parts, and we found these hummingbirds feeding.

Hummingbirds

This hummingbird get stuck in the cab of the truck, and had to be lifted out. It shows how small they are. and it has to be said, Sarah shot the moment

And so we continued to Volcan Villarrica which is one of Chile’s most active volcanoes standing at 2,840 metres which was the one we decided to climb. You must take a guide with you, also you need proper equipment like crampons , helmet and ice-pick to get you through the ice and snow once you reach a certain level. The crater is always active, with lava visible and sulphurous fumes rising from the centre. Part of our hike consisted of walking through the volcanic grit which was a good warm up, and then as we got close to the summer snow line we had to put on crampons and helmet and from here there was a trail zigzagging up across the snow and it was a good idea to stick to this so as to avoid any crevasses , also we had to use our ice-picks for balance. Just when we were about 10 minutes from the top we took off the crampons as we were back on volcanic grit and scrambled up the last bit to reach the top in 3 hours 20 minutes, not bad for amateurs!!!!! Every metre was worth it once we saw the views of the ice-fields, other volcanoes in the distance, and not to mention Volcan Villarrica at its best, the view of the whole crater was amazing, 500 metres from one side to the other.

Sarah showing the ice axe that got her to the top of Volcano Villarica

On our way up the Volcano ice field with Ruth

Looking down into the crater at the top of Volcano Villarica. The steam you see rising stinks. It is 500 metres across the crater to the other side.

Ourselves and the happyfeetonntour crew at the top

View from the top of Volcano Villarica

As always coming down is much quicker than going up, but we weren’t quite prepared for our descent!!! In our back-packs was a canvas wrap for the bum which we tied around ourselves,put our helmets on and gloves and we had to sit in the channels of snow and slide down using our ice-picks and our feet for the brake. You couldn’t see how far down you had to go each time so it was always best not to gather too much speed just in case you couldn’t stop , which did happen to me, I lost control and nearly ending up falling out of the channel, but just managed to slow in time before I was the ‘laugh’ of the day. Quite exhilarating once you got the hang of it, but as a result we were down very fast. Apparently in the winter you come the whole way from the top to the bottom this way, but at this time of year there is only some snow left so we had to sline then walk, slide then walk… When the whole volcano is covered in snow, you can come down in 35 minutes! We never thought we would be sliding in snow down the side of a volcano!

Sarah looking happy about throwing herself off the side of a volcano

I had to chase Sarah down the slide

Going down was a lot quicker and more fun than going up

All four of us reached the bottom safe and sound and being St. Patrick’s Day , having done the hard bit, we were now onto the good stuff ,food and a toast to all our family and friends where ever they may be , and what a lovely way to spend it drinking and eating with our friends Jurgen and Ruth.

A toast to St. Patrick from the side of a volcano. The branch on the table was the closest we had to shamrock. Really.

Dinner was cooked on the BBQ once we got down. Fillet Steak, carrots and Chicken. Easy on the veg 🙂

Wide angle view of sunset from the side of Volcano Villarica on St. Patricks night

Sunset on St. Patricks night in Chile

To wrap up a super day, we had the sun setting on one side of where we were sitting, and on the other the smoke from the volcano, it couldn’t have been any better.

Really Chile just never stops giving !

Categories: Chile | Tags: chile, hiking, Volcano | Comments Off

Chiloe Island off the coast of Chile

Posted on March 13, 2013 by merv

As it had been a number of weeks since our last boat trip our sea- legs were wondering what was happening so we decided to do a trip to Chiloe Island. We boarded the ferry in Puerto Chacabuco and supposedly 28 hours later we were to disembark in Quellon in the south of Chiloe Island however due to bad weather conditions this turned out to be a 34 hour journey.

This is the weather we wanted to get away from. Waiting for the ferry at Chacabuco

The sun broke through just as we were about to board the ship.

We sailed through loads of fjords , very picturesque, visiting some tiny islands, stopping a little away from villages where the guys would lower a small shuttle boat into the water and tip across dropping off and collecting more passengers. Some of these islands looked like they had no vehicles on them, their only mode of transport was by boat. Not much wildlife to be seen but we did manage to catch a glimpse of some dolphins !

Launching the small shuttle boat. Note the crane has no hydraulic rams, all joints welded up.

Only a narrow stretch of water separates Chiloe Island from the Chilean mainland, but crossing into it is like stepping into another country. The island is only 250km long and 50km wide , and it’s climate is not unlike Ireland’s , hence it is very green. It’s Pacific coast is almost uninhabited but it’s northern and eastern sides are very green, and loads of little villages in which fishing is popular.

Many of the smaller roads were wide enough for 1 vehicle.

28 percent grade is rather steep, very steep for loose gravel.

Some of the roads got quite steep, very steep for loose gravel.

One village in particular stood out and it was called Dalcahue where we spent a lovely morning enjoying the sun while pottering through their craft market, watching the local women (mainly) knitting as well as selling their products, being women they were able to multi-task. Also enjoyed really good coffee here too, none of that instant stuff!!! A first for Chile, to say nothing of Chiloe Island!

Many dolls at work

Sarah loved this handbag collection

This little dolls are fridge magnets. Guess we we brought home to the mog....

This little dolls are fridge magnets. Guess what we brought home to the mog….

Chiloe is best know for its quaint Palafitos (wooden houses), with fantastic bright colours, which are built over the water on stilts, perhaps to pay less rent, as you pay rent for only the bit on land , as no-one owns the water ! It also has many wooden churches which are quite plain, not many of them were
painted when they were built by the Jesuits in the 17th and 18th century and were built using wooden shingles on the walls and roofs, but despite that they have a strong charm of their own in a very simple way.

The biggest, and brightest church on the Island.

This church, built by he Jesuits, was never painted.

Inside of a Church.

We tried to hide the Mog behind the no parking sign. It didn’t work.

Inside a Church

Wooden church in Chiloe

Colorful Church front.

We spent a lovely evening chatting and helping guys press apples , the first step in making cider, in exchange for a ‘park’ for the night, I’ll let the pictures tell the story……. Merv at work, while I supervised ha ha , for a change !

A new press is made every year or so. It’s pretty simple.

Loading apples into the pulping machine

Cleaning down the press ready for apple juice.

Loading the pulped apples into a sack for pressing

Sarah looks on as the 3 guys get ready to press some apples

Work is not as hard as I remember it.

Also another super trip was along the Rio Chepu, which was just the two of us in a small boat with our guide Fernando, who took us up the river , into a beautiful lagoon in search of Huillin (otters) . Just as we were about to give up the ghost, hey presto they appeared out to hunt, after all it was late evening so I guess it was near feeding time for them. Speaking of feeding time , after our boat trip we had a lovely evening of chatting and eating in the Hospedaje where our guide lived. All guests and family sat together at the same table and shared their experiences, wonderful. (www.senderodechepu.cl). A real treat here was the freshly baked bread cooked just in time for dinner, scummy.

a nice simple pose from a river Otter.

The otters are hard to spot in the trees just above the waterline.

Otter hiding under a tree

Next stop we visited Los Islotes de Punihuil which are three small islands located right in front of the Puinhuil beach, a small beach surrounded by beautiful landscape on the Pacific Coast. This beach is special as here you can see the Magellan and Humboldt Penguins ( we hadn’t seen the Humboldt before) living together, and sadly the Humboldt is in danger of extinction. Here also we saw the Nutria del Mar also known as Chungungo, (sea otter) which is different to the river otters we saw yesterday.

Sea Otters at play on the rocks

Humboldt penguins have a little bit of pink behind their beaks

One of the tour companies had a pretty novel way to launch its boat!

even the cattle have to work hard here to earn their keep

When you don’t have a jetty, this is how to get passengers to your boat.

Landrover near the end of its hard working life.

Categories: Chile | Tags: wildlife | 5 Comments

Rodeo Time, Valle Simpson, Chile.

Posted on March 8, 2013 by sarah

After all it was the weekend, so we decided to visit a Rodeo to see how a small village like Valle Simpson celebrates its fiesta.

When your time us up, please dismount the horse carefully….

It was late Friday afternoon when we arrived in Valle Simpson ( about 20kms south of Coyhaique) and at first we thought we were in the wrong place as there were no signs or posters indicating that there was a Rodeo happening in the village the next day, strange we thought. However, we stopped and asked two very elderly men who were out for their evening stroll, and they confirmed we were in the correct place with big smiles and laughter and kept saying Fiesta Manana, Fiesta Manana. Then we asked was it possible to park the trucks in the field where the Rodeo was and they said no problem, but just as we were asking the question a guy walking by said that we could park them both at his house , in his back garden without even blinking an eye, yes in his back garden so we ended up spending two nights there, such hospitality from a family we had never met before and he didn’t know us from Adam!!! Just gives you an insight into how lovely, friendly and helpful the Chilean people are.

Some people from Valle Simpson

Portrait of official ticket checker at the rodeo in Valle Simpson

An official ticket checker.

2 riders waiting by the pole.

a spectator

a guy near the BBQ

This lady had to explain to us why she could not sell us beer. Tough lady.

Actually, the events permit had not been physically given to the police, so they would not allow any alcohol to be sold at the event. No worries when you have a truck with a fridge full of beer parked 50 metres away 🙂

Rodeo in Valle Simpson

Rodeo is a great sport of rural Chile , deriving from the round-ups of cattle for branding or sale. These cattle were often almost wild and it was necessary to break a young cow by catching it between a horse and a wall and forcing it to the ground to be branded.

A Rodeo is always the centerpiece of a town’s fiesta and almost every town has a medialuna (arena). Its a great opportunity to see HUASOS in their traditional finery of ponchos, wide-brimmed hats and spurs, displaying their equestrian skills with plenty of traditional food and drink, food being at least 7 complete lambs done on the BBQ.

The format was to have 2 strong poles sticking out of the ground. A horse would be tied to one, a simple saddle put on them with a very tight girth, and a guy gets on board. Once he is all set, the horse is untied and all hell breaks loose. The horses try to get rid of the riders, the riders to stay on, and the spectators love to see what happens next.

These horses have great brakes!

This guy was amazing, he even controlled the horse towards the crowd who loved that.

I loved the concentration on their faces.

This is just after being released from the pole

The horses were pretty serious about getting rid of the riders.

The announcements all day long were accompanied by a guy playing guitar. He was pretty tired by the end of it all.

Categories: Chile | 10 Comments

CAVES and HANDS in Chile at Cuevas de Marmol

Posted on March 5, 2013 by admin

View down a valley on the Carretera Austral. This was our lunch stop.

Cuevas de Marmol

A lovely place to stop, well one of the many lovely places to stop along The Carretera Austral is Puerto Tranquilo, and from here you can take a lovely boat trip to the Cuevas de Marmol which are a set of marble caves on the lake shore south of the village , of which the most spectacular is the Capilla de Marmol otherwise known as Marble Chapel. The boat really maneuvers in through them and you can see the many different colors shapes and shadows in the very clear water. The caves are really the product of river erosion , hard to believe this can happen to marble !

We loved the light reflecting onto the rocks

Rock.

Peeking in to the Cathederal

Underwater was as spectacular as above the waterline

Reflection or not….

And then there were 2….

Inside the Cathedral is simply stunning.

The boat came right into the cave. Jurgen was shooting just about as much as I was.

a small graveyard with what looks like small huts.

Here we also bumped into Mathilde and Romain whom we had previously carried for a couple of days, so we all shared the same boat. However, Romain felt very brave and decided to go for a swim in the beautiful clear warm water ( or so he was led to believe ), but once he was in he screamed “FLIPPING FRIO” and yes we all laughed. It was interesting to hear this mix of English and Spanish from a French guy for an Irish and German audience!

Flipping Freo. Must be French for something…

Our next visit, very short one I must say , was in another small village called Cerro Castillo . Here we went to see pre-Hispanic rock paintings and this style of painting outlined hands which showed the remains made by the Teluelchs with the hands of positive and negative adults and children. The hands were done mostly in red, but there was the odd black one .This style of painting was developed over 8000 years ago. To make the positive images, they put paint on their hands and pressed it to the rocks. For negative, they put their clean hand on the rock, and spat paint all round it.

Hand with black outline

Many hands make light work. Sorry, Snapper humor.

This was a bit of a disappointment, and not really worth the visit.

Categories: Chile | Tags: Carretera Austral | 7 Comments

Random photos from a bit of camping in Chile

Posted on March 1, 2013 by admin

Just a short post as we’ve heading back into some National Parks for a while to do a bit of camping in Chile, and probably will not have wi-fi access for a couple of weeks. Things are going well, we got the Oil changed in the truck, bought our own hair cutting trimmer so Merv’s next haircut will be any day now. We discovered that our water pump for getting water from lakes and rivers is not pumping high enough to get the water into the truck, so we’ve a bit of head scratching to do on that one.

We thought we’d put up a few random photos from the last couple of weeks to keep you all happy while we’re missing.

Small camp spot by a lake ” Lago Tranquilo” meaning tranquil lake.

Happyfeetontour bypassing yet another bridge

Chase, an Alaskan guy we met shows us how to fly fish.

This is supposed to be the greatest flow of water of any of the Chilian rivers at the meeting of the waters.

This is supposed to be the greatest flow of water of any of the Chilean rivers at the meeting of the waters.

Dinner! Yum Yum!

Love a good sunset.

Just for my crabby silver-haired friend, all 4 of us having a sundown drink.

Categories: Chile | 4 Comments

The Southern end of the Carretera Austral

Posted on February 27, 2013 by sarah

With hiking finished for a little while at least, it was time to clock some miles and keep moving North. We were back on the famous Ruta 40 in Argentina which runs the entire length of the country and it appears to be never ending and really it finds it’s true heart in the wilderness of Patagonia as from when we left El Chalten ( Argentina) to the Chilean border of Paso Rabollas this road was nothing but rocks and gravel surrounded by a featureless landscape of scrub grass. We carried two lovely French hitch-hikers approximately 450 Kms over the course of 2 days , but other than that the howling wind was our only friend, as encounters with other people or vehicles were few and far between. Guess that’s why maybe it’s called Argentina’s loneliest road !!!!!! Mind you many other parts of Ruta 40 are quite spectacular , just this section is not.

This unimog really works for a living

Mind you once we crossed the border into Chile again, the scenery sure made up for the last two days of boring road , here it was the other extreme, every corner you drove around it was more spectacular and it took us one and a half days to do about 100kms . Oh we got a puncture also, not surprising with all the rocks on the roads. Merv was very pleased to spot a few Unimogs over our first days back in chile. There was an older Unimog parked up by the side of the road and permanently attached to a winch cable as it was used to remove rocks from a quarry.

Some of the bridges are pretty old and tired. Just after we crossed one, we spotted loads of new timber in place to replace it.

Simple little bridges are years old.

New timbers to replace the bridge we just crossed. Hmmmm…

Fellow overlanders this border crossing is very simple , only one guy working here , and he does entry into chile , TIP form ( temporary export permit ) and customs. No checking of our truck either so happy days.

The road just stretches out in front of you. Gravel surface for days at a time.

For some place a little different we visited a little town called Tortel. In this town there are no roads , and the only way to visit it is by timber walkways made from cypress wood along which friendly dogs follow you wherever you go. The area has been visited since prehistoric times by the canoeing Kaweskar nomads who are practically extinct nowadays. People living here make their livelihood from wood , a small amount of tourism but apparently it’s increasing every year , plus there are one or two small shops with very limited supplies. A very cute and must see place!

Us, overlooking Tortel

Lovely old buildings by the walkways

Very nicely carved canoe showing life as it used to be

Ever watch the name of the rose? Similar stairs here..

Sorry. Have to play with the camera from time to time.

Loved the timber.

The houses are stitched into the hillsides.

So now we are travelling North along the very famous Carretera Austral “The Chilean Patagonia” which is about 1,250 Kms long and runs from Villa O’Higgins to Puerto Montt. It has dramatic landscapes, many lakes, forests, glaciers and fjords and very rough and bumpy roads, many with potholes so no high speed travelling. We hope to stay in Chile for the next few weeks at least, maybe longer. Sometimes we have had to go into Argentina as Chile does not have roads all the way from the South to the North!

A typical Aysen phrase is ‘ The one who hurries, wastes time’. Perfect for our trip!

The views here are fantastic.

Categories: Chile | Tags: Carretera Austral | 2 Comments

St. Patrick’s Day on Volcan Villarica in Chile

Chiloe Island off the coast of Chile

Rodeo Time, Valle Simpson, Chile.

Some people from Valle Simpson

Rodeo in Valle Simpson

CAVES and HANDS in Chile at Cuevas de Marmol

Cuevas de Marmol

Random photos from a bit of camping in Chile

The Southern end of the Carretera Austral

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