Leaving Chile

We are still alive....
Havent heard from us in a while,we are still doing very good.
After the very impessive volcano Villarica in Pucon and beautiful Thermal springs to swim abit we continued south to Isla Chiloe.30 minutes by ferry from the mainland,and we arrived on this beautiful,green, rocky peninsula Island.The first stay was in Castro which is famous for their colourful houses built on poles in the water,looks quite fun.Otherwise nothing special,quite boring actually.After bad food in a real touristplace(didnt know that,looked very nice from the outside),and some sleep in a low low buget hostel,we drove up to the north of the island to Ancud.Very nice small village by the ocean.Found a swiss small hostel and stayed there for one night.I mean we are in Chile and are not particulary interested in meeting too many Swiss or Swedish people.But we must say that its nice once in awhile to take a shower in a CONSTANTLY HOT shower instead of icecold,hot,icecold,hot and not freeze to death in the night beacause they dont have any heating,its springtime here and sometimes really really cold in the night.That afternoon we went to another part of the coast to see our pinguins that we wanted to see for so long.Amazing landscape on the 20 km way out there to a small bay.Extremely windy and cold,but it was definately worth it.Humboldt&Magellan pinguines sooooooooooo sweet.After a really good nice sleep and breakfast with homemade bread,we slowly started our trip back to Santiago.Met some nice Irish and german girls in a quiet country place called "zapato amarillo" (the yellow shoe).Had abit too much beer and wine,really nice conversations and a good laugh.
After one more night in some shitty town,and another sleezy hotel on the way to Santiago,we finally arrived back here where we started 3 weeks ago.
And....after 8000 very expensive kilometers we left our car,and tomorrow we take the bus for a 7 hour trip to hopefully much cheaper Mendoza(Argentina)Otherwise we will be back home in a couple of days.....hihihihi
Chile is very beautiful with all different kinds of landscapes and very nice and friendly people,but its also VERY expensive.I mean still cheaper than at home but expensive for being Southamerica.We are way over our budget and havent been living exactly in luxury,sleeping in a lot of sleezy places,eating cheap but good food.But what the hell,we ve been having a great time here,and met alot of interesting and funny people.And now we are looking forward to Argentina,exciting..................
Talk to you later
N&G

Going south,south,south

Time to bring our butts back south. Again nowhereland only empty chopper and other mines, broken villages and then 430km nothing...Finally a dream came true and it s called Bahia Inglesa. Fantastic beach 6km wide,sidewind onshore,9er wind and one kitesurfer.
Drove car directly on the beach getting ready for the first kitesession on this trip,just fantastic. Was this nice kitesession already worth to took all the equipment with me??Dont know yet.
Next day driving again,want to visit Isla Damas and Choroz where some penguins,sealions,dolphines live. But of course not on the tourist way,no,no it has to be the famous Kerni way. So we were driving to little fishing village asked there some local fisherman and what a surprise. There were two chilean guys waiting to go out. They are journalist and fotographer for a famous Santiago Newspaper and are writing an holidayspecial for the newspaper. So they said we have to catch up cause they need also models for the Fotoshooting. We had a nice time on this island and they made many ,many fotos of us for their artical which will appear in the paper in the middle of december. what a pitty no animal but a very funny day.check it out http://www.emol.com/ or http://www.elmercurio.com. (Domingo en viaje)
Still heading south La Serena,Viña del Mar, Valparaiso to an beautiful surfervillage Pichilemu. Nice waves, little to less wind for me and freezing cold brrr cold night.
Still heading south Chillan.. visiting a nice little Viña tierra y fuego managed by some swiss guys. Michele Ruefenacht ( Thomas and Max probably recognized like me this name.. remember the good old Leichtathletikzeit....10Kampf..swiss Champion and Olympic competitor 84 LA) cooked us the best meal since we got here. And of course lots of good wines. Michele lives since 13 years down here and told us so many fascinating and intressting stories about chile.
Still heading south,damn what a long ,long country and passed Los Angeles and Temuco into the lake district. Taking place now in Pucon, which is very touristic in high season and also a bit for the moment. Activ Volcanos, hot springs,waterfalls ,ski resorts and and and...so we stay here for a while...
to be continued........

El Tatio 4330 alt.

After that we didnt make it with our own damn car,we booked a tour up to the volcano el tatio.
We got up at 4.00AM!!! 2 1/2 hour horror drive on bumpy paths till the top. -10C when we got up there without any real mountain clothing was quite a bit cold. But after sunrise it got warmer and the amazing view of all geysiers made it all worth it. On the way back, we saw some kind of strange animals. Vicuñas, they live on 4000alt and the bigger brother Lamas live on 3000alt. We passed a native village with the funny population of only 7 people. After this journey we were ready for some beers and we had a very funny evening with some british engineers,who are taking care of some Star Observatories. Now, we saw the highest geysiers of the world and have been in the driest area of the world ,so whats next..............

A really horrible day

My gooodness...what a day.(Still in San Pedro)From waking up until going to sleep only misstakes and shit things hapeened.Just about everything went wrong this day and then we mean EVERYTHING.Woke up really early around 5.30 to drive to the Geysirs El Tatio on our own ,with our small Toyota yaris.The car didn·t start.Happens a lot lately,something to do with some alarm system.After a while finally got on the road,which seemed to be ok.Not paved the whole time but also nut so bad in shape....for awhile anyway.Had to give up after about 30 km.Drove back in slowmotion to get some sleep before the next adventure.Wanted to go to a Nature Reserve to see the Salt lake of Atacama closer and some pink Flamingos.Got there without trouble saw everything we wanted to see and then....of course the car didn·t start again.For avery long time.Got abit help from the Chilenian guy in the "bolleteria",in spanish of course,didn·t understand a word.Anyway after awhile his whole family came out and tried to do everything to help us,and still every word in Spanish,his wife even climed up on the roof to make a phonecall to toyota emergency nr.Anyway after about 1.5 hours the car finally started and we could continue our journey.Because we were a little late we thought Let·s make a shortcut...BIG MISTAKE.After about 10 km on a really really bad unpaved road ,just about 100 meters before the perfect paved mainroad there were like a ditch full with sand in the middle of the street hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.Ok lets drive back(the thing is also that you loose so much time om theese unpaved roads because you have to drive very vey slow,with all bumps)Smile and don·t loose your sense of humour,which is very difficult in this situation.Okay we were so upset so we took another shortcut to get on the main road which was sooo close.This time it was even worse but we made it yeahh.It was kind of late now but we definately wanted to see the beautiful lakes up on 4000 m.And it wasn·t sooo far away.And the street was okay,on the end it got abit worse though and when we realized that we were all by ourselves up there,no car,bus,human beings and worst of all no more water .We realized ,both really dissapointed that we couldn·t make it.if something would happen to the car or what ever it wouldn·t be that fun.nd we were sooo close.Another 2 km......................
But much better to come back safe to San Pedro,and we did,finally.............
Really needed and deserved areally cold escudo.went thursty and a bit hungry to anice small restaurant,to find out that they for the moment only had some grouse strange german beer and most of the food on the menue they couldn·t make beacause the oven were broken..............
we couldn·t believe this we thought we were in( the wrong movie).We should just go to bed,so nothing more could happen.And we did.Sueñes con los Angelitos...................
Nina&Geri

Desert and Nomansland

After two beautiful days in the valley Pisco with tremendeous view on the stars and of course a lot of pisco sour drinks,we moved on. The hardcore day,where we had to do a horrendeous drive through the desert, the panamericana took us up north. fantastic 1000km to Antofagasta (in a day)which is a horrible bigger city than we thought. Horror was also that we arrived after about 12hours drive in pitch black Antofagasta. At least we needed some beers and we found the Titty Twister of the town. But what a funny experience with some locals buying us beer and 25years old AC/DC and Deep Purple Video Jukebox.One night at a poor hotel and we moved on on the east side. Another 300 km we re now in the pretty spansish indian desert town San Pedro de Atacama. 2400 alt and still very hot weather is amazing. Surounded by 5000 alt Volcanos, Saltlakes and crazy landscapes. Tomorrow it s time for the Geysirs of Tatio which is on a height of tremendeous 4200alt.
P.S Fotos following if it will be working

Los Andes

Panamericana Nr.5 brought us up north to la Serena. Nice little colonial town with a super long beach which is very quiet at this time of the year but seems very busy and a partyplace during the summer. The weather even though we are 450km north of Santiago is quite cold specially the nights.brrrr C9 degrees.For the moment it seems we are the only Gringos in whole Chile.... In the meantime we are in Vicuña in the feet of the Andes (Piscoland). Amazing lookouts, lakes and winerys in front of the high Andes are a fantastic view.
a luego

Santiago

After a really,really long flight we finally arrived in Santiago. And of course in Sao Paulo they lost my Kitebag, of course the Brasilians.....hihihih.But finally after two day it arrived non broken nothing stolen to our Hotel.Santiago is a Fantastic and very busy City. The weather is amazing for spring time ,its very hot during the day and in the nights quite cold. Geri has already a sunburn on his shaved skull. Our poor spanish is really horrible,but we re learning a lot day by day and word for word.