Helloooo Buenos Aires … just a little touch of star quality

Posted on March 22, 2013 by fleesee
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For those like Ben and I who were swept up by the musical Evita many years ago (way before Madonna revived it) you will be familiar with the song on the album “Helloooo Buenos Aires”. The minute we set foot into Argentina we have been constantly ear wigged by songs from this show. Now you can imagine our wave of excitement, waking up to an overcast day pulling back the bus curtains to see the freeway rising over the concrete sprawling outer suburbs of BA. Continue reading →

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Walking on the moon – Valle de la Luna

Posted on March 19, 2013 by jammin
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Mendoza was a crossroads for us – our initial plan was to head from here to Buenos Aires via Rosario and Cordoba, but the thought of more mid-sized cities didn’t really excite us. We had read of a place called Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) further North, and although we hadn’t met anyone who had been there, with a name like that who could resist?
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Malbecs in the City – Mendoza

Posted on March 16, 2013 by jammin
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Until now, our path had been fairly easy to choose as the south of Argentina is sparsely populated with a lot of arid Pampas (plains), so most travellers simply follow the Andes north. However after Bariloche, the country widens considerably and so do the options. We considered catching one of Argentinas last remaining trains east to the coast, mostly out of a desire for a change from bus travel. The main attraction of that area are the whales and penguins, but it wasn’t whale season and we had already seen penguins in Punta Arenas, so we decided against it. As we are partial to a drop or two of wine, our best option was to follow the mountains and head to Mendoza, the main wine producing area of Argentina. Even when our original plan was to catch the bus from Santiago to Buenos Aires, we had intended to stop in Mendoza on the way. Plans changed and we headed south instead, so now was our chance to visit some excellent wineries.
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Bariloche, a little bit of Swiss.

Posted on March 12, 2013 by fleesee
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Flying to Bariloche was our first internal flight on this trip and we felt it was a little like cheating. However, I was relentless in finding an alternative to the infamous Ruta 40 bus journey from El Chalten to Bariloche crossing 12 hours of dirt road staying overnight and then another 12 hours travelling through vast wasteland. There is only one airport out of Argentina’s southern Patagonia being El Calafate and like all remote tourist places in the world, flights are expensive, especially when you book a week out. We had learnt about an airline called LADE which is run by the Argentine Air Force and surprisingly they had an online booking system. After endless attempts of entering in dates searching for the first available, I got lucky to find not only a flight out but the same cost as the bus, $160USD. My determination in researching hours each night on the internet pays off.
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“You must visit the Fitz Roy” – El Chalten

Posted on March 3, 2013 by fleesee
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Whilst we head counterclockwise around South America there is a narrow pivot where the clockwise travellers cross paths and for us this happened at the bottom of Patagonia. The standard questions of ‘where have you come from’ and ‘where are you going to’ are exchanged and every clockwise traveller we meet recommends with such passion and exclamation “oh you must visit the Fitz Roy.” Hence for a month now of hearing this, our excitement builds knowing we’re on a bus finally heading to El Chalten, the base town for treks and climbing to the Cerro Fitz Roy (Mount Fitz Roy)
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Now that’s one big block of ice – Glacier Perito Moreno

Posted on February 25, 2013 by fleesee
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What makes our trip a bit more of an adventure is a not having a set itinerary. A year gives us the flexibility of deciding when and where to go at a moment’s notice. But in Patagonia, the well-trodden route seems to be pre-determined for us. We are all here to see natures most beautiful extra-ordinary sights. Having had 5 ‘wow’ days on the Torres Del Paine trek we continue our excitement for the Argentine Patagonia we have heard so much about.
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Trekking the Torres del Paine National Park

Posted on February 22, 2013 by jammin
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Torres del Paine had long loomed as a challenge on our trip. From our very first day in Santiago, we heard many stories from other travellers about trekking around the park, but we still couldn’t really get our heads around how it would work until we arrived in Puerto Natales and started doing some research.
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Penguins, tombs and duty free in Punta Arenas

Posted on February 16, 2013 by fleesee
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Having arrived in Puerto Natales on Monday after 4 days on the Navimag, I thought I needed just a few more days for my blisters on the back of my foot to heal. By Wednesday I had underestimated the time. I got the blisters from our first huge trek back in Cochamo. Still in pain wearing my treking shoes I find myself having to wear sandals and socks in a climate that is below 10C in the summer. Over the next few days we catch up with our Navimag buddies Karin, Peter, Paul and Carola for coffee and dinner and constantly bump into others also from the Navimag. Everyone is gearing up for the Torres Del Paine trek. However with sore blisters and bad weather forecasted we make an executive decision to delay our trekking to next week. In the meantime what to do…
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Crusing the Patagonian Fjords on the Navimag ferry

Posted on February 11, 2013 by jammin
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The problem with heading south through Chile is that eventually you run out of road. We wanted to get to Puerto Natales, deep in the South of Patagonia, to trek in the Torres del Paine national park. But there isn’t any way to do it by bus other than crossing into Argentina which we planned to do for our return trip.
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Off the beaten track in Cochamo Valley

Posted on February 6, 2013 by jammin
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The aim of travelling is to find amazing places to visit that have not yet been ravaged by the effects of tourism (of course the irony is that we contribute to the ravaging, however lightly we tread). One such place (for now) is the Cochamó Valley, an hour and a half from Puerto Varas.
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Isla de Chiloe – land of currantos and Jesuit churches

Posted on February 3, 2013 by fleesee
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With credit card in hand and our rental car dropped off at the hostel we’re ready for our trip to Chiloe. It’s a sheer joy to load our back packs into the boot and drive. For a brief moment we imagine how different our travel would be if only we had a car for the rest of the year. Hmm that ain’t gonna happen so enjoy the moment.
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Mas volcans and German teacake en Puerto Varas

Posted on February 1, 2013 by fleesee
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The time has come for us to make our way down south. Leaving Pucon is like leaving our comfort zone and I guess this is now really the beginning of our adventure. You know it’s time to leave when the waiter from the week before recognises you and yells across the street “Hola, are you still here”?
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“Rapido Lady, Rapido”

Posted on January 30, 2013 by fleesee
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My apprehension of climbing a volcano began before we left Australia. When we chose Pucon as our base to enroll in Spanish lessons, Ben was excited to learn one of the major attractions to this pueblo (town) was climbing Volcano Villarica.
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Estudiar español en Pucón

Posted on January 28, 2013 by jammin
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Our reasons for staying in Pucon were two-fold. Firstly we wanted to spend some time learning Spanish before we got too far into our trip. And secondly, the leadup to getting away had been so hectic we decided we needed to stop somewhere and relax for a while to recharge our batteries.
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Valparaíso, the jewel of the pacific

Posted on January 18, 2013 by jammin
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We’d had a great time in Santiago, but it was time to move on. We had already booked a hostel in Valparaíso, a port town about 1.5 hours north of Santiago. We caught a taxi to the bus station and managed to use our extremely limited Spanish to buy a ticket on the next bus which left in just 5 minutes.
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Cervezas and Empanadas

Posted on January 8, 2013 by fleesee
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After only 3 days here, the streets, metros and signs seem to take on a sense of familiarity. Santiago has a great vibe to it and we are enjoying what it has to offer. Continue reading →

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Dos boleto por favor….

Posted on January 6, 2013 by fleesee
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Our arrival into Santiago was smooth. All airports are the same these days and our lack of sleep for 2 days justified a USD11 shuttle bus to the hostel. Chatted to a young guy next to us from Brasil who had 11 months in Brisbane studying English. He arrived in Australia with no English at all and was returning home with great conversation. My thoughts jolted to optimistic wondering if our 2 week crash course in Spanish lessons could deliver the same results.
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Santiago gallery and location history

Posted on January 5, 2013 by jammin
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We’ve just posted our photos from Santiago.  You can access them from the “Photos” menu at the top of the page.  Some words about Santiago will be coming soon!

Up top you’ll also find a link to our location history.  This will show a log of where we’ve been.

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On your right you’ll see spectacular views of the Andes

Posted on January 4, 2013 by fleesee
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Strange at 4am I decide to put pen to paper or these days keyboard to screen and begin to write about my days and thoughts of our year ahead. I am wide awake out of sync with our time zones. Yesterday was my numb day….saying goodbye to my family and a week of saying goodbyes to friends was difficult.  My Cancerian nature is on overload of senses and if I could only have an outpour of crying would have felt much better….instead tears bottled up and leaked all the way on the plane across the Pacific.  Tears of sadness, fears, anxieties, trepidation (especially for me leaving behind my medical security blanket which has given me annual reassurance after my cancer 8 years ago).
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Race against the clock

Posted on December 28, 2012 by fleesee
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It has been 6 years since our last backpacking travel being Burma and that was only for 3 weeks, so we, correction, I, was a little out of practice.  I just was not ready to start our adventure.  Needed at least another week to have that complete sense of preparation. But the fact that we had decided on the spur of the moment in late August and booked our flights within a day of the decision, did not really give us the necessary time to finalise our jobs, prepare a house for rental, move and sort our life into boxes, let alone cull our lives into a backpack for 12 months.  It is a race against the clock.
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Moving out

Posted on December 5, 2012 by jammin

Moving out of a house we have lived in for 13 years proved much more difficult than we expected. The amount of stuff accumulated over that time is just staggering, and with limited time to vacate the house by December 5, we didn’t have enough time to evaluate our need for each item.  So while we did get rid of some things (the Salvos did very well), we ended up with a pretty big load of stuff to be moved and stored.
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And so it begins again …

Posted on November 2, 2012 by jammin

After years of talking about it, we finally decided to take a year off and travel / work overseas.
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Posted in Pre-trip | 3 Comments