25, Nice but Dull

True to our name, we’re really going southy now. The continent is getting skinny and the temperature dropping quickly. The reward is rivers and longer days. For the last however many months we’ve had the sun setting around 5 or 6 pm so the days have felt short, especially with the urge to avoid driving in the darkness. Maybe the sun was rising early and the days were just as long except we slept through the first half? We will never know. Chile seems to run close to our somewhat unproductive body clocks, which is nice.

Talking of things going south, we’ve got coolant leaking from a crack in expansion tank. You know when you think you’re doing the right thing but it turns out to be a super dumb thing? We replaced our 30 year old tank despite it having no issues to prevent it from having issues yet 30,000km later the new one is leaking… Bugger.

We’ve got a bit of a problem. Well actually it is you hat has a bit of a problem. The area we are in is nice, and there’s lots of normal things to go and do and people are friendly and helpful. Which means there is nothing interesting or funny to tell you about at the moment. It doesn’t feel like we’re in a crazy far away country, things are green and there are lakes and other people on holiday, we’re just being normal now. Which is pretty lame for our few remaining loyal readers, so we’re sorry.  We’ll do our best.

 

Here is a nice green field where we had two peaceful sleeps, played some Frisbee and fed some horses.

Then we went on a hike in a national park for 7 hours and it was nice and warm, and we saw monkey puzzle trees, nice mountain lakes and huge woodpeckers. We even found bamboo sticks to help us walk.

I know, it’s painful isn’t it? Here is a big volcano far away, and a really nice view. Nice, but not so interesting…

In a desperate attempt to keep you interested and amused, here is a sign telling you that someone is sigin’ in the rain in 500m.

To really prove the point that we’re no longer off the beaten (aka interesting) track, here are our neighbours for a night, a local in his Dad’s big van and some Dutch in a rented tiny van. They were nice, we had a nice evening.

Most. Productive. Day. Ever. This won’t mean as much to you as it did to us but here goes. In a single day we:

Filled our water tank thanks to the man with a hose watering the grass at a petrol station.

Bought a crap tonne of food before heading into the rural south.

Broke down on the motorway, then realised we had run out of fuel so used our reserve and carried on.

Refilled our propane tank which turned out to be much more empty than expected (classic us), but Steve had to operate the bleed valve himself sans gloves and got drenched in liquid propane during the process which is -42 degrees. Soon he might be able to feel his fingers again.

Filled up on fuel albeit a little later than we should have.

Drove 300km, twice our average.

And swapped our tyres around on the rims.

You see the photo on the wall? The big grinning man? He’s mocking us because he thought we’d have a good experience at an expensive tyre shop, but he knew better. In order to wear both the inside and outside of our poor tyres we wanted them flipped around on the rims. How hard can it be to do a proper job? Much too hard apparently, and as much as Steve wants to rant and rave about all the mistakes and ignorance it’s probably not in anyone’s interest to let him. But he will just say th…….  Jenny let me complain!! No one cares Steve, shut up.

Nothing, he doesn’t want to say anything more.

So back to boring niceness, really, what is there to say? It was a lovely place to swim in crystal clear water and the stars were out in their millions following a lovely golden sunset? Blah blah. Yawn!

Smooth tarmac and roadside blackberries. Nice, far too nice.

We’re leaving the “Lakes District” and hitting up “Patagonia”, the real thing. There is a road that runs through connecting all the rural arse ends of nowhere called the Carretera Austral, egotistically named after the prime minister who built it in the 80’s.

To start on this road we need to take a ferry, not the one pictured above. It takes 5 hours and leaves tomorrow so off we go to find a river to sleep beside. It’s very nice, and Steve even does some fishing and successfully catches absolutely nothing despite obtaining a lucky canine mascot. This was another almost adopted animal, so laid back in nature he didn’t mind being dragged around upside down by his front legs. In fact, when Steve stopped the dragging, he remained on his back and started waving his paws around as if to say “again, again”. Very cute, sickeningly nice.

We had more company reminding us of how not different we are. Three Germans and an Ecuadorian travelling in a rented car and a Canadian backpacker. New record, 7 in the van playing cards. You’d think that many people would make it warm in such a small space but no, it was still freezing all night. Having said that, it was probably much, much colder for the other lot sleeping in tents. Suckers.

Time to hit the water and what a nice, nice day for it. Genuinely perfect. We gently travelled along through a fjord in the bright sunshine, chilling on the top deck with dolphins occasionally jumping in the ship’s wake watching the glacier topped mountains pass us by. If you’ve got to pay for a ferry ride… this is probably the one.

It was a two part ferry, with a short drive between ferries in the middle. Can you tell we’re getting desperate to find things to tell you yet?

We hit terra firma again and said goodbye to the Germanish gang after a short walk in the ancient forests. Can you spot the non-German?

And then we slept beside the gravel road that marked the start of the next chapter, Patagonia. A good place to end before we bore you to death. But it was all very nice.

.paM