Skip to main content

16/1/2018 Arrival to Los Antiguos

...around 7:40am we stopped at a bus terminal in Perito Moreno. We though by this time we should be in Los Antiguos already. But we reached the bus terminal in Los Antiguos around 8:40am. The last part was on normal paved road. 

I could see that the Chaitén travel bus is already in Los Antiguos. And another bus just reached after us. 

The Los Antiguos bus terminal is similar size to that one in El Chalten. Has toilets inside and few travel offices. It is Tuesday, but most of the offices are closed. Since about 3 full buses just arrived here, it’s is quite busy, on the floor with people sitting and in the toilets too. We are waiting to get it more quiet here and asking about how to get to Chile Chico. 

We were told that there no service to go to Chile Chico anymore. The travel office is closed. And the only way is to walk or to hitchhike. It is nearly 20km from here to Chile Chico center and of it 16km between the border controls. As we are standing here, a Scottish woman Annie joins us and later Belgian-Italian couple joins us too. Because we don’t want to walk that distance neither we are sure with hitchhiking, the only option seems to be an organised trip to Puerto Río Tranquilo. 

This trip is sold in the Cal Tur bus office inside the bus terminal. Normally it is a round trip together with marble caves boat trip. But young English speaking guy in the office sells also one way trip only. It is organised by Los Amigos hostel and the price we paid was 1000 pesos per person. The bus is for tomorrow (Tuesday) morning at 8am. All 5 of us reserved the places for the bus, but paid later. 

Annie asked tourists office for printout of accommodation in Los Antiguos and together with with the other couple headed to the nearest one - Dona Juanita. There is a small grocery shop at the corner and we asked inside. The owners also do the accommodation and showed us nice Cabaña next to their house. 5 people can fit in, two rooms and a kitchen. 2000 pesos per night. So we each paid 400 pesos. 

After refreshment, we went to the town to withdraw some money from a cash machine. There is Banco de Chile and there was very long and slow queue for ATM. I didn’t need money, so went back to cabana to eat something. The rest of the guys were queuing for money and didn’t get any at the end. So better to have some cash before coming to Los Antiguos. This was the same situation like in Ushuaia - the cash machine didn’t allow to withdraw from foreign payment card, but allowed locals to get money out. 

I then went to pay for the bus transfer to Puerto Río Tranquilo marble caves directly to Los Amigos hostel. Paid by debit card. 

Later in the evening, went to the beach of the Lake Buenos Aires. Big waves and windy. 


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

24/1/2018 Chiloe Castro, car hire, Teneun, Dalhacue, Cucao

We woke up around 10am, Denisa went to buy something for breakfast and we ate in the hostel. Then we packed all things and left to the tourist information centre, where young English speaking girl gave us a business card of local car hire place we headed to straight after.   The car hire place we used in Castro Chiloe is called Hostal Cordillera. They asked us what type of car we want (no English speaking) and what the prices are. We chose the smallest car Kia Morning (3 cylinders) and the lady told us we need to wait until 12 as someone will return the car to use for us. So we walked to see the main church (UNESCO) on the main square and we bought some really tasty potato bread, or something, filled with minced meat. And also kuchen with special local berries called makui (they grow only on Chiloe). Each was only 1000 pesos and it was amazingly good (we ate the kuchen later on the road).  At 12, we were back in the car hire place. Jorge spoke very clearly Spanish and slowly

8/1/2018 leaving Torres and back in Puerto Natales

The rain didn’t stop. And the rain didn’t stop until 2pm. We didn’t sleep, as Denisa discovered some sort of claustrophobic issue inside of the tent and woke up freaked out almost immediately after she felt asleep. Getting out and in to the tent while it was raining at night made our tent and thing more wet. Towards the morning, high condensation of humidity in our tent started making our sleeping bags wet too. One the rain slowed down, we got up and tried to cook porridge. The water from the camp was dirty (apparently drinkable), but the boiling didn’t make it less dirty and anyway, it just started raining more heavy again.  Fed up, throwing the cooking gear next to the tent and going to the central building to cover and have breakfast there. Two coffees and two muffins 8000 pesos quite expensive, but doesn’t matter. We waited here until 12:30 and then went back to pack our tent and things. My jacket was dry again and we successfully packed everything during light rain and wait

30/12/2017 Glaciar Martial

30/12/2017 Glaciar Martial Morning we stayed at home and trained Spanish and English with Cristina. We had to wait until 11am to walk to pickup our washed laundry.  Walked 30 minutes, paid 160 pesos, walked 30 minutes back and hanged the clothes to dry in our room.  Then we got out and slowly walked towards the city centre and trying to catch a taxi on the road. After 5 minutes we caught one and he took us up the hill to Glaciar Martial. We paid 230 pesos, taxi meter was on showing tariff 1.  The hike up the hill from the car park was about 1.5 hours and 1.5 hours back down the hill. It was mostly sunny. Time to time rain, snow, cloudy, windy. The views were okay. Nothing special. We took few photos and walked back to get a taxi to terminal omnibus in city centre.  Yesterday we spoke to our neighbours staying in the same flat as we are. Nice Austrian couple, so we are having a dinner with them today. In a restaurant they went to two days ago and recommended. The on