HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Not spending 3 hours at the Argentinian border this time
WORD OF THE DAY: WOW in regards to the view from our camp grounds….
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 363KM
“This is a reminder to value the people that matter, seize the moment, wish with courage and adventure with relish”
We don’t have as far to travel today but we do have a border crossing, and they are just the ‘unknown’ on how busy they are and how thorough they want to check us. Our last Argentine border was a schmozzle back in late December, so it will be interesting to see how long this one takes. The Chileans are also quite thorough as they scan our bags and are very strict in bringing fresh fruits and vegetables as they have zero disease and they want to keep it that way. But for some reason their system seemed to work better and even with the scanning and checking of the truck didn’t take as long as Argentina. I’m just stating facts here.
So keeping all that in mind, Mark and Gray decided to get an early start leaving our wonderful little hostel at 7am. It would have been nice to spend one more day in El Calafate, it is a cute little town but we were now heading for 4 nights in Torres del Paine National Park……camping. I personally think it is a night too long there, but let’s see what activities are on offer when we get there. I may be surprised then again I may not. This section of the trip is not ‘Bern’ friendly. I’m not a hiker, a horse rider, a canoeist, a kayaker or an outdoorsy type of person. I enjoy looking at magnificent views, sitting outside and reading and getting some sun, so I knew this would keep me busy as the other guys went out and did their ‘hiking’ thing and I still wasn’t going to feel bad that I am not that type of person. Tucan are obviously catering to all kinds of people and this is the ‘active’ section of my 158 days and I would have expected people to be just that being on this section. Just like we have found out that the tour from Rio has 28 people and 18 of them are over the age of 50. So it will be an older group on that section and again it shouldn’t surprise me, as it is an expensive section of the trip at $4400 for 42 days, so it would be a bit more cashed up people and also getting that much time to do a 7 weeks trip.
We arrived at the Argentine border at 10am. There was one family in front of us, and by the time half of us had been processed another truck had pulled up with about another 20 people, so we were lucky here and we had completed their formalities in 30 minutes. It is a smaller border, like a small country one in the middle of nowhere. So no money changes, no sellers and no traffic. All very quaint and quick. It was a 20KM drive to get to the Chilean border and we still had food on the truck, so we stopped for an early lunch at 11am to get rid of all the food we had to before getting to the Chilean formalities. So we had lunch in no-man’s land, which is pretty cool as I don’t think I have done that at all ever, so a cool claim to fame on that. Getting to the Chilean border was a lot busier, but as we got off the truck we were told to bring all our big backpacks inside for scanning, so we drop them off at the scanner, get our passports stamped, throw our bags on the scanner on our way out and then back to the truck. In the meantime an inspector has gone over the truck with Gray and we were all done and dusted and back on the road again within the hour!!!
WELCOME BACK TO CHILE – for the last time. This is the last time that we enter into Chile. We go back into Argentina in 5 days’ time where we will be for the next 3 weeks. The guys in the truck will have another Chile border as they truck out of Ushuaia, where Kate and I are flying out. We have worked out that we have had 10 stamps so far with borders in our passports and we have another 19 to go, just getting to Brazil!!!!! I hope everyone has enough room in their passports to accommodate all the stamps. They seem to be pretty good with the ‘stamp etiquette’ in South America and they try and stamp on the same day as you exit somewhere or next to the stamp that marries up with your arrival. So looking at what has gone in so far they get 4 stamps to a page, so keeping in mind that we have 19 more (well Kate and I will have 4 less) that’s nearly another 5 pages taken up in your passport. Then I need a Brazil visa, another page, a Paraguay visa, another page and also a Venezuela visa for another page. Thank goodness I paid extra money to get a 65 page passport instead of the usual 32 pages.
When you are on the road so much, there are a lot of hours to think and think and think some more. I think sometimes people can’t understand how important friendships and even relationships (of the platonic kind) are on a trip like these. You are with these people pretty much 16 hours a day. All from different countries, different backgrounds, different jobs and different values to name a few things that make people, well people. All it takes is a small crack to appear and the rest of the truck can be affected and if you’re not careful could turn out to be a BIG mess. I believe the start of this trip was heading down that track, but the turning point was New Year’s Eve and I think we are all back to being adults and respectful of each other and it has all settled down. Adding in some new blood in Santiago also changed the dynamics and we have a pretty good group…now. Kate and I are very similar and have a ‘give give’ relationship, so one of us will always know when to just walk away, we forgive and forget and then move on like nothing happened. This will happen when you have already spent 54 days together and have a further 104 days to go, so we accept that we sometimes need some alone time, appreciate that and I think that is why we haven’t killed each other and still enjoy each other’s company. We also don’t sit next to each other on the truck, so it is just more breathing space for us on travel days and it works well for us. It is a close environment travelling overland and it sometimes needs a little nurturing for it all to stay fun and happy otherwise it could go to the shit real quick if you’re not careful.
I also forgot to mention that I contacted the Ethiopian Consulate in Australia yesterday. One of the girls on tour asked what requirements I needed to be able to live in Ethiopia. Hmmmmm – good question Kirrily, I hadn’t really thought too much about that yet. So I shot off an email to the consulate which is located in Melbourne and they came back within the hour with the information I needed. It looks simple enough. Most nationalities need a visa for Ethiopia that can be done when you arrive at the international airport for 20USD. This visa is a 30 day visa. I can apply beforehand with the consulate in Melbourne for a 3 month visa, in which time I find a job with a registered Ethiopian company, I then need to apply for a business visa, which requires that I need to leave the country to apply and then come back again. But my understanding is that I can do that at any consulate, like Kenya for example, so I don’t have to fly all the way back to Oz. A few emails have gone back and forth between the consulate and myself, but they always reply so quickly, and with me having 5 weeks back home in July, the first phase of the 3 month visa will be a good start. So that is another hurdle that doesn’t require too much work, thank goodness. And thank you to the Ethiopian Consulate in Australia. You rock.
We stopped in a town 50 minutes from the border to re-supply. Gray and Mark needed to buy food for the next 5 days and gave us a last minute stop to buy schnacks, water and whatever else we needed. Kate and I ended up getting a trolley and stocked up on the mint biscuits that we like so much as they are only in Chile, more toilet paper, water, chips, cheese and cabana’s. It was a great supermarket and pushing a trolley around felt just like home. We got an hour here, so with all our food stashed on the truck we got 20 minutes to have a wander around. A lot of the shops were closed for siesta, so after a stop at the pharmacy for Kate to get some face wash we were back on the road again to our final stop just outside the national park arriving there just after 3.30pm.
The camp site is great. We have a perfect view of the magnificent mountain peaks of Torres del Paine, even if the tops were cover by cloud. The grounds are all grass, so we have soft ‘carpet’. There is a room they have built with tables, chairs and a small kitchen with a massive fire place and the showers and toilets are plentiful, hot and flush. What more could a camper want? So we were given free reign on where our tents were to be pitched. It is interesting to see where people go, it was quite windy, and so Kate and I decided to pitch right near the truck for its windbreaker attributes and not far from the room and toilets. Some people went near the fence for their windbreakers and some just set up in the middle of the field…. Either way we were all pitched and the fire roaring after dinner to keep us all warm. The power doesn’t come on till after 9.30pm, but it is still light outside and gets switched off again at midnight and there is always hot water – awesome.
It is very rural where we are, with cows and horses walking around our tent but there are 3 hotels a 2km walk away, so we are thinking of having a 5 star day on one of the days and just have a few beverages and use the Wi-Fi in luxury for a day. Sort of like a Spa Day. The guys have a big walk tomorrow climbing one of the mountains to get to The Towers and apparently it is up there with an Inca climb. It isn’t a walk but a hike of approximately 8 hours. 4 hours in and 4 hours out. Yeah not my cup of tea, so Kate and I are going to go along for the ride through the national park, get some photos that Gray said he’ll stop at all the view points for us, and for me this is just as good as the walk!
So back to nature and in a beautiful surrounding. This is Torres del Paine.
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