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Home > Diaries > 2019 > 808 |
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WELL IT'S another day today winding our way through the Andes. We’re staying in Chile today. We did stop off at a supermarket to pick up a heap of supplies because that will be the last significant town, we will pass for quite a few days. As we continue up the road towards Santiago there will be quite a few more overnight stops along the way in the northern end of Patagonia. I’m guessing we’d be pretty close to the 45th parallel now, level with Fiordland (in New Zealand) and pretty close to the bottom of Tasmania in latitude. There’s quite a lot of autumn colours out at the moment and it’s continuing to get warmer as we head north. It was very cold last night. It’s a relatively calm piece of road here as we pass through the mountains. It’s quite a long winding journey around these different valleys through the Andes. Well we’re back on gravel road now and heading over a pass over the Andes. This is quite a steep old gravel road. It’s still the main highway going up through the middle of Patagonia but it’s pretty rough. We are making good progress and we hope to reach a base where we will be able to see the fiords. It looks like we’re stopping at a rest stop here. Way up here on the mountain (at the rest stop) we have found this waterfall. Some of the guys have already gone right up to the base of it. This is absolutely spectacular crystal-clear water coming off the Andes. We are crossing the high mountains and we have a big drive over a pass on a gravel road. In the mean time we can stop and enjoy the absolutely spectacular waterfall. We’re continuing to head up the mountain. It’s quite a high pass we’re heading over. The road is very steep and very rough. We’re making it slowly but surely. We’re now heading down the equally precarious other side and its quite cloudy over here. We’re obviously on the seaward side of the mountains now and rapidly descending this rather bumpy gravel road. It’s late afternoon now and we’ve finally reached out campsite just up on the hill here. There’s a beautiful bubbling brook going past flowing into this beautiful fiord. It looks like a lake but this is actually the sea. I think if you track out this direction far enough. This is a massive network of fiords. It completely cuts up the west coast of this part of South America. It goes right out into the Pacific Ocean. Actually, this is the first time I’ve seen the Pacific Ocean on this trip. There’s a lot of bush here. As you saw we went over the massive pass over the mountains. On the other side it was perfectly clear and fine and on this side it’s quite cloudy. This is the exposed side of the Andes and the rainfall here’s a lot higher. The clouds are fairly low but I don’t think there’s any rain forecast. There is a lot of rain forecast for down south and up north but we’ve been really lucky. We’ve escaped all the bad weather. There’s the occasional boat going by, but apart from that this is a very nice peaceful area. A few people have set up tents but I think most of us have upgraded to, there’s a couple of little houses here with all these bedrooms. I’ve actually got my own room tonight which is fantastic. They’ve got wood burners to heat up the water so it’s taking a little while to get all that sorted. Tonight’s dinner crew are preparing dinner. This is just a really beautiful place. It’s not going to be so cold tonight and obviously tomorrow’s going to bring a whole new adventure. In the meantime, I’m going to sit back, relax, and enjoy this fiord and join all the others for dinner fairly soon. Over and out. |
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