Verdeta Journey

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 ...

Getting up at 6am, packing last bits and having breakfast in our hostal. The bus leaves at 7:20am from the bus terminal. For us it’s easy to get to, as we are staying in hostal Alcazar near the bus station.   Yesterday we bought two tickets with company Buses Gómez, departure at 7:20am from Puerto Natales and price 15000 pesos open return ticket for one person.  The bus left on time and we got A4 form to fill in with our details. It is a declaration form for the national park Torres del Paine. At 8:10am we get on slightly worst roar surface and continue to the park. At 8:45 a dirt road came along. And we could enjoy views of the Torres towers. In about 45 minutes we got to the park entrance, waited queue to get tickets and at 9:45 we were done.  Then we continued to Pudeto stop. The most of the people got off the first stop - Laguna Amarga. We got off the bus at Pudeto at 10:30 and at 11am we started to walk to Mirador Cuernos viewpoint. Very nice sunny wea...

Lazy day. Woke up a bit late and went downstairs to try the breakfast provided by our hostal. Very simple one. Each seat has one plate with 3 toast bread slices and each table has two slices of salami (or ham) per two people. Not impressed,  but it’s enough to eat something.  After the breakfast we went to the bay for a long walk and then to the tourist information centre where we asked for a map of Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine. Also we asked about bus tickets to Torres and we were told it’s better to get them a day before we want to go to Torres. So we walked to the bust station on the other side of the town centre and bought two bus tickets to Torres del Paine. Company we chose: Buses Gomez, one return ticket 15000 pesos (bought two) and we could pay using a payment card. Departure from the bus station at 7:20 am and open return.  After that we could just relax and buy last bits we wanted. But since we were hungry, we stopped for lunch in Mesita G...

After yesterday dinner and wine, I’m a bit down and observing small neck pain. We woke up late and had breakfast around 9:30am. Then we packed our rucksacks and Denisa prepared food for the way to Puerto Natales. I asked the hostel owner if I can print our bus tickets (bought online couple of days ago on cordelo.cl website. The tickets we bought are Bus-Sur company and each ticket costed 8000 Chilean pesos. The bus leaves at 12:30 noon and it should arrive at 15:45 to Puerto Natales.  Before noon, we left the hostel to the Bus-Sur bus station which is on Av Christobal Colon, very close to Hernando de Magallanes. We got our bags labelled and sat on the bus. Most of the people didn’t have their tickets printed like we had. They had a receipt from the bus station till. I don’t know if they bought directly here or got the receipt here back of an online payment.  Now I’m on the bus. It’s cold here and I need to take some painkiller to get rid of my headache. Note that t...

Breakfast in the Hostel Keoken is really nice and around 10am we walked short distance to the centre.   I forgot to mention, we had a private room and a private bathroom and all was very clean and comfortable in the   hostel.   The town is clean and nice and feels so much better than Ushuaia. We can also see a Bata shoe shop (Czech brand) on the street. Firstly we are going to get tickets for the Isla Magdalena to see penguins. We found Comapa travel agency which sells one ticket for 50000 pesos. And we are lucky, there are only 3 spaces left for today. We paid by Revolut payment card and very shortly after us, another couple asked about the tickets too, so we were very lucky. We could speak English here without any problem.  Then we wanted to withdraw some Chilean pesos from a cash machine and tried our Visa debit card in Banko Credit de Chile and for 150000 pesos, the cash machine asked fee 6500 pesos. So we tried Santander and for 150000 pesos the fee w...

As I wrote before, be got our tickets from Marga Taqsa office in Ushuaia (Juana Genoveva Fadul 126) on the day we arrived (Friday 29/12/2017). The bus company is Barria Ghisoni. It is standard long distance bus with tiny toilet and one deck. The ticket costs 1000 pesos (only cash payment) and the bus is leaving at 8am.   We got up at 6:20am, had quick breakfast and packed our rucksacks. At 7:30am we reached the omnibus terminal and handed our rucksacks to a guy from the bus. They didn’t want to see the tickets, neither passport. And they didn’t put any label on our rucksacks either.  Shortly after we departed on time, they gave us a Chile customs declaration form (I’ll upload later) to fill in. I was looking forward to have some amazing views from the bus, all the windows inside were steamed and wet, and it was raining outside anyway. So no views. There is no USB, neither good air con on the bus. The bus was packed.  The first stop is Argentinian b...

We packed in the morning after breakfast. Is was alright weather. So we decided to make our way to the Hotel Antartida in city centre. Once we left the accommodation, it started raining. Heavily. The whole way (1 hour) to the new hotel. We got to the hotel’s reception at 12 o’clock and waited in the reception until our room is ready. We could pay using MasterCard, to we were quite happy about it.   At 1pm, we were already in our cold room number 32. Took hot shower and took our wet things out of bags to dry. It was cold and the heating did not work. So Denisa went to complain to the reception. The guy from the reception came to our room in 10 minutes with some tools and started fixing the radiator. Quite interesting. Closed both circulation vents and unscrewed the venting vent. Then opened regulation vent and let the hot water go out from the radiator. And the same thing with the bottom vent. But he fixed it and the heating work d since.  Then we went shopping to L...