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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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We caught the night bus from Pucon to Santiago, treated ourselves a bit to the ‘Cama’ bus with basically arm chairs that recline back to near horizontal! We arrived in Santiago in the early morning and decided not to pay the £75 collection charge from our next accommodation in San Alfonso, so we made our own way negotiating the metro then catching a ‘Collectivo’ (a taxi that follows a set route, set price and collects until it’s full up). Two hours of travel ended up costing us a total of £3.60!!! Bargain! The collectivo dropped us to the door of our new home for four days, the picturesque Cascada de las Animas, located in the foothills of the Andes!
The terrain was a combination of the desert of the La Serena area and the green landscape of Pucon. We were in the middle of a valley with huge mountains either side and snow capped mountains in the distance. We checked in and lugged our bags down a gravel track to our little cabin in the woods! A gorgeous one bed cabin with a wood burning fire, cooking facilities and a BBQ area outside. We headed off to the local town to get some supplies, only to find that it was siesta time and the supermarket was closed and not open for another hour…doh! So we did the only sensible thing that we could do, sought refuge in a local pub and had a cold beer! We later successfully completed our quest for supplies and cozied up in the cabin with the fire!
The next day we had a lazy morning and set off for a little hike to a nearby water fall, we were initially joined by two stray dogs of which there are sadly too many in Chile. The young male was a bit bolshie but the female was good as gold. We passed through a gate and under the instructions of the owner didn’t allow the dogs through. The female, being the smaller of the two slipped through under the gate and ended up being our shadow for three hours of hiking. Beautiful scenery all around!
We arrived back at the cabin and set up for a BBQ, Mike eventually got the fire hot enough without coals to cook, the male dog arrived back and had to be shown the pecking order again. They are now guarding our cabin from any possible threat! We want to adopt the female one, she’s adorable! Apparently lots of the good people of Santiago drive their unwanted dogs out into the countryside and dump them there! Who would ever throw one out? It’s gutting to see so many especially when they’re so good natured.
The following day we set off on a longer hike into the Andes, climbing up hill for the best part of 2hrs, it was like walking in a documentary, I just happened to look down by the side of the path and saw a large navy blue coloured wasp taking on a tarantula! We continued climbing up the mountainside, accompanied by yet another dog, a chubby lab that we nick named ‘Slider’. We went pretty high up and saw some more amazing views. We headed back down towards a plateau and had a picnic overlooking a ravine and the snow capped mountains in the distance. Another great day!
It was once again coming up to moving time, so the next day was spent sorting out the first stages of New Zealand. Then off we went backtracking our route back to Santiago airport and we waved a fond farewell to Chile.
previous travel blog entry
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