Bye bye Chile

Last day in Santiago was in sense of shopping, eating, San Christobal viewpoint and earthquake. Yes the small earthquakes were already kicking Chile in San Pedro de Atacama when I was there and now. And now there was biggest earthquake in Santiago in more than a year rated at 7.1 of the Richter magnitude scale. Everybody got scared, but I didn't noticed it. I was walking down from San Christobal on the bike path alone. I had some strange feelings that some animals are moving in the bush around or even people. The first moment when i realized it was when Facebook asked me to mark myself as safe. People were worried. The earthquake probably hit me when I was on that path.

Next day the move to the airport and bye bye Chile. It was an incredible journey with a lot of to see. Some new challenges along the way like hitchhiking. Seeing volcanos or glaciers so close. Experiencing earthquakes. There is always something new to experience.

San Pedro de Atacama

San Pedro de Atacama is desert city in middle of nowhere but incredible moon like nature all around. Most of the houses around the city are one floors made of stone and dried mud. Mostly hostels has some wooden and concrete materials.  The city is like 5 by 5 blocks. Even though the city has good selection of restaurants and places to dance salsa and so on most of the tourists go outside to enjoy the wonders of this desert. The first day I took it easy, booked my trips for next two day and rented bike in afternoon to go to Quitor and Valle de la Luna. The Quitor had done very nice views over the valley but took me more time than I expected so I didn't managed Valle de la Luna. Tried to catch sunset at Valle de la Muerte but I was too late either. The biking through the sand was very hard. I did 40km altogether in this sunny and dried and not comfortable surface and returned back by night. The nights are here quite cold by contrast. It's still 2500 attitude and it's warm only on the sun.

The next day my whole day tour around most famous lakes started early in the morning. Inn the bus with 20 people we were crossing this moon like land one lake by another. Pictures speak for themselves.

The third day I went to Cerro Toco stratovolcano measured at 5640m high. The plan was to wake up early and go by car to 5200m and climb the rest. Sounds like easy, but this attitude has serious consequences. There is less than half of the air at the sea level, causing breathing issues. There is also nearly doubled sun intensity. Freezing air. But most importantly the attitude sickness. I spent the first day in San Pedro de Atacama in a quite sporty way to accommodate and day after the tour was around lagunas slightly over 4000m giving me some room to accommodate. Still I knew from my previous hikes especially Mt. Kenya (nearly 5000m) that it's something not to be underestimated. We started early did a breakfast on the way. Then reached our starting point and started to descent slowly. But very slowly. You could feel with every step lack of air. Something brain can't understand until the point you start to braise. It took us 2 and half hours to climb because done people in the group couldn't manage. The views were fantastic like from Salvador Dali's board. Descent was much faster and we have been back to the city by 2pm. 

I had some time so after little sunbathing (rather sun burning) I booked trip to Valle de la Luna by bus and did great lunch before. It's closest popular attraction. Moon like formations, full of salt. Great views again. And we stayed until sunset. Pretty tired I prepared my food for next morning and packed my stuff because my transport was at 5am. Going back to Calama and flying to Santiago. 

Next very early morning  (5am) I moved to Calama for early flight back to Santiago to spent one last night. 

Valpraiso

Valparaiso is alternative city full of artists, grafitty walls, colourful buildings but also dirt and smell. Further the day I arrived there was counting of the people thus it was dead city. After extra two hours in bed I was laid back in hostel and later in afternoon I went to Viña del Mar just few kilometres away because they had nicer beaches where I wanted relax but the weather wasn't really for sunbathing. It was cool relax anyway. I later did short walk through the park and ended up at the coast again to see the sunset coming. I went back to hostel, drinking a beers and chatting with other people finishing my day quite tired.

Next day I did walked the way where free tours I happening but did it on my own due to time constraints. I walked through some very colourful streets, hit famous local empanada shop, the harbour and especially city elevators (15 ¢ each). Then I had to run for a bus to take me to Santiago and it's airport to fly to Calama where my road trip continues with visiting San Pedro de Atacama.

Pucón

I arrived to Puerto Montt very late. I realized that the bus goes at 17:00 arriving to Puton after 22 basically leaving no room for booking for next day. So I decided to contact Adam and Jana to do me lift in the morning to closest city on they way to Santiago which was 35km away from Villarrica. They agreed to pick me up next morning after they arrived by the ferry. They also talked to their friends in Pucon to visit them basically taking me all the way down to Pucon and also introducing another Czech Chilean couple. We visited they house which was trying to be maximally eco friendly with the grass on the roof and so on. I organized Villarrica volcano trek for next day. We had beautiful late vegetarian lunch and I went to local non touristic waterfall with them. All were very friendly people.

The trek to volcano started at 6:30 by moving to the base of it by car. Than before sunrise we took chair lift to help us gain first 400m attitude and then the walk to gain another 1100m attitude started. We used crampons from the half of the trail to cross the glacier up to the top where we took them down again. We walked lightweight without crampons and bags last 20 mins to reach the top. It was beautiful sunny weather with weak wind. But the breathing mask was still necessary. You could see lava at the bottom of volcano. We spent some time there and started to descent again. This time full 1500m attitude. After more than 8 hours of tracking the beer at the base was mandatory. 

Two more celebration beers and proper steak down in the city. I now had to decide what to do tomorrow as that was the day when Chile we counting people basically forcing everybody to stay home. All shops, restaurants, activities and also national parks were closed. I decided to move to Valparaiso by night bus. I bought cama seat (like bed) but unfortunately in the last line so my back seat wasn't fully foldable so I had terrible night but managed to rest little bit to a point when bus assistant woke me up at midnight that I need to fill the form for counting the people even though I'm tourist. I appeared in Valparaiso early morning and accommodated in one of the colourful hostel to sleep at least 2 more hours.

Puyuhuapi

The main road is open only in the morning and the evening. The city itself is also very calm or actually calm from tourism but heavily under construction. I met mostly drunk workers on the streets. I decided to hitch hike 22km south to Queulat national park entrance. I didn't even reached main road and worker took me down to his excavator 5km away of park. Soon after another car was passing and took me right there. I was lucky.

The park is relatively small. Less than 4 hours walking altogether. My leg is still crippled for some reason so this looks like my limit. I left my big backpack at entrance gate and went to main viewpoint from where you can see the hanging glacier on top of valley with waterfall coming out of it and from time to time cracking and ice falling siren to valley followed by earthquake kind of sound. Very impressive. Went down the lake to see it from another angle and just had little siesta with couple other people and park guard. I could hardly walk on way back, my body telling me that something wrong with my leg. Feeling tired because of that I decided to amend my future plans little bit. Hitch hiked back to town to accommodate again and decided to go to local thermals next day and postpone my hitchhiking to another day after the thermals. That also suited uncertainty about the buses passing the lakes towards north as somebody told they are not in service due to end of season. Making backup plan for ferry going 3 times a week more realizable.

Next day morning, I had very hard tone to hitchhike to thermals and I basically had to walk 6km there with all the bags. It didn't helped my leg neither but it was doable. Thermals were nice relax on my ways. Little bit pricey fire what they offered, but combination of cold lake and hot whirlpools was amazing. I spent there around 3 hours and decided to hitchhike north as much as I can. Knowing its more than 4 hours by car to El Chaiten left me with small chance at 4pm I could make it there. I got my guest hitchhike quite soon at least back to Puyuhuapi. But then got stuck there more at least hour while out of 5 cars passing, 3 were full and one was police car which didn't stopped me obviously :-) I started to think I will sleep another night in town and maybe get next day bus if it comes. Hitchhiking can be desperate sometimes. In that moment car was leaving village my way and that was my luckiest moment of my hitchhiking. After little spanish which always ashames me, the typical question "where are you from?". People from the car turned out to be Czech people working on embassy in Chile for 3 years and their plan is to reach El Chaiten that day. My luckiest moment. So we talked and stopped at couple places to take pictures or just enjoy Patagonian nature. We drink a beer and so on. We were very fast doing El Chaiten in little over 3 hours thanks to new paved roads at couple of places. I right away took the first accomodation and we set in the restaurant El Volcan next to it. They served beautiful soft and huge beef steak fu8r good price.  Another few beers swallowed and Pisco Sour and that was the end of my betty relaxing and lucky day.

The next day I took a fully booked bus to Puerto Month. As before I just blindly sat inside on free seat hoping that somebody won't show off and it clicked. There were couple more people standing on this 9 hours bus hoping for the same. To be fair, more than half of the way is spent on in total 3 ferries or waiting in the harbour for the ferries. The ferries go through nice fjords and are quite spectacular taking me whole day to reach Puerto Montt, my transit city.