Chile

In a valley surrounded by white mountains, Santiago combines old Spanishstyled buildings and modern city live. Because it was to cold in Santiago (around 10C), we decided to go to the Norte grande. A bus would take 26 hours, so we determined to rent a car. We got a Nissan pick-up and drove on the Pan Americana to La Serena, with snow covered mountains on the right and the Pacific on the left side. On the nearly deserted highway, we drove more than the allowed 100km/h and suddenly there stood a policeman in the middle of the road and stopped us. It wasn’t the last time - seven times we had the pleasure to show the car papers, driving license and on three occasions we were warned not to drive so fast, but fortunately we never had to pay anything.

After hundreds miles of pampas, the last vegetation vanished in an area where it rains every 5 to 10 years. It was raining when we drove through this stony desert. On our way to Antofagasta we traversed the driest place in the world the Atacama desert. As we drove on along the coast to the north we saw offshore an natural arch, lots of pelicans and some sea lions. High desert mountains in various colours and formations, moonlike valleys, old mining towns, deserted decades ago, but still in good shape, were on our way till we arrived Arica after 2500km (or four days).

Near the border of Peru, Arica is the best starting point for visiting the Lauca National Park. Within only 200km from the sea level up to 5000m at the Bolivian border, we saw one of the most beautiful landscapes we’ve ever seen. The 6300m high volcanoes with dark lakes, turquoise lagoons with flamingos and huge herds of vicunas and alpacas. The air was so thin that it was nearly impossible to walk without the heart beating very loud and ringing for oxygen. The sun was burning down and a cold dry wind went though the clothes.

On a small road beside the main road we got a flat tire, but at first we only found half of the tools we needed for changing the wheel. Not very funny, because nobody was driving down our road. At least we found the missing part but still didn’t find out, how to get the spare tire out of its place under the car. We were very happy when a car stopped and a very helpful Andino showed us how this magic mechanism worked. With a very bad tire we had to drive back 200km to Arica in the sinking sun on a horrible road without guard rails in the curves and before deep gorges.

Our next stop was San Pedro de Atacama and its famous moon valley. With its nice adobe houses it’s a good place for visiting the highest geyser field El Tatio. Because we didn’t want to get up at 2 o’clock in the morning, when the tour busses start, we decided to take the longer but better way with our own car, stay one night in a ‘refugio’ at 4300m to be at sun rise at El Tatio. Unfortunately we had to give up after 80km because the road was so bad and the remaining 40km should be even worse. On our way back we stopped in a town which lies in a deep canyon where the time stands still. We nearly crash our car because of a missing street sign (in Chile every small curve has a sign).

On a petrol station four soldiers entered our car, to get home on the national holiday. Because of the cold wind, they lied flaton the button of the pick-up, as we were stopped again by a radar control. The police officer walked around the car and look in the font, the soldiers haven’t moved an inch. Maybe they were our free ticket, with a grunt, the officer hinted us to drive on.

Because of the rain a few days ago the desert was flowering in various colours. And on our way back to Santiago we stayed in Valparaiso an old port city with huge colonial buildings build on mountains which are accessible with wooden elevators. The coast line remembers on the Mediterranean Côte d’Azur. After 5500km we gave back our car and changed on one of the roomy night buses to the south of Chile.

It only took a few hours in Temuco and we got recidivistic and rented a pick-up again. It’s the only possibility to reach the various lakes, volcanoes, waterfalls and forests. The country side is totally different to the North, here was green the dominating colour. Yellow broom was flowering near the road and up in the mountains strange monkey-puzzle-trees are growing. After a hard 80km hill-climb, our way was blocked by snow and we had to drive whole way back over those narrow wooden bridges and muddy roads.

We made our way from lake to lake and sometimes had to turn around because of missing bridges or impassable ways, but finally we arrived in Puerto Montt. We’ve driven on the Pan Americana from the far North to the South of Chile, sometimes in both directions. Like the Los Lagos region, Puerto Montt remembers of the southern Bavaria or Austria, but without hotels, good roads and cultivated land.

Back in Temuco we took the bus to Neuquen (Argentina). In a comfortable semi sleeper we drove through one-way tunnels with more rain in- than outside. We were crossing the boarder over the Andes and understood why this road was opened just a few weeks ago. Meter high snow was beside the road.

Our last four days we spend in Buenos Aires, a town full of old pubs, bistros and restaurants. Because of bad weather we were moving from one café to the other and enjoyed the flair of bygone times.