Buenos Aires & Montevideo

Hallo,

The last week/days we have been in Buenos Aires. It´s a bustling city and we enjoyed our stay very much. On the last day there was public holiday for political reasons and there was a big demonstration of all political parties in the streets of the center of B.A. It was a big spectacle with thousands of people, music, dancing, flags etc... it was interesting to watch.
We also spent one evening in a nice artist cafe to watch "the argentinian tango" being danced by professionals. That was great as well although we decided to stay with salsa :-).
After that we went by bus overnight to Montevideo in Uruguay. We arrived on sunday and the city was nearly "lifeless". Cafes and restaurants as well as all shops were closed down, nobody and no car, nearly nothing in the streets.. it was kind of earty for a capital.. we were also a bit disappointed by the architecture. There were some old colonial buildings - although nearly ruinous - but most of the buildings were unsighty buildings from recent years.
On monday the life was back again in the city ... we felt a bit more comfortable, but still I am disappointed... then we went back to Argentinia via the small town "Colonia" in Uruguay which was very nice but by that the unstoppable rain has already started and since the day before yesterday it hasn´t stopped raining once.

We are now back in Argentinia, in Rosario, but it is still raining which seems to be the best breeding and living conditions for thousands of mosquitos lurking in hotelrooms and in the streets ... :-(
They say "it never rained so much in the last years like now" and the fields and rivers are flooded .. great! :-( ... so we try to keep up the good mood and will continue to travel northward to the "Iguacu waterfalls".

Best regards to all of you! We haven´t heard a lot of you lately - (have you forgotten about us already?) - so tell us how you are at home!
Renate & Mirko

day 50 of our journey ...

DAY 50 of our journey!!
unbelievable and we still don´t miss working! and we don´t miss "schnitzel" or "rote gruetze" ;-)
let´s summarize:

what we do:
- we use only about 4 differnt things of our luggage (1 t-shirt, pants, insect repellent and book) as those are the things which are easily accesible within our backpack.. all other things are deeper down and we got much too lazy to unpack our bags every time we would need something from deep within... considering this we could easily throw away all that stuff as well.
we even wash the socks overnight to put them on the next morning again, which seems easier than fishing for new within the backpack...
- we refuse to speak english in order to stand out against the ordenary tourist, which sometimes is a real battle of nations: the latinos proud to show off with their little english and we stubbornly answering in spanish (to show off with our little spanish of course :-) )
- we still don´t give up our hope of getting a good coffee sometimes, somewhere ... but at the moment we can only report one really good coffee wich nearly(!) tasted like one in Vienna in Bariloche (judge and jury: Renate as expert flown in from Vienna).
- we finally gave in to adopting some of the argentinian-spanish pronunciation (their "che") because we don´t want to say everything twice before they understand what we mean (calle, pollo, caballo, semilla, ella ;-) )
- we miss you all!
- we still marvle at the amount of differnt things and people, wonders of nature and hundred of new things we see everyday!

what we don´t:
- we no longer take any rooms next to shared bathrooms, kitchens, without windows, with bad mattrasses, without enough space to put both of our bags into the room and still being able to put a feet on the ground as well...
- we don´t get excited any more when crossing the border between chile, argentinia, uruguay, argentinia, chile, argentinia, chile....
- we don´t expect any shop, cafeteria, office, museum etc to be open before 10 am
- we don´t even think one second of: work, SAP or offices
- we don´t think we have had enough by now.....

Renate & Mirko

Nationalparc "Vulcan Lanin"

Hallo!
Last week we spent 3 nights camping in national parc "Vulcan Lanin" which was phantastic! We had good luck with the weather and spent 3 days nearly without clouds and a clear blues sky. Always in the background of the landscape there was vulcan lanin which was shaped like a perfect cone with a snow top. the nature was wonderful! really! we went trekking and relaxed in the evening sun reading and sleeping. We even went bathing in the lake - which was rather cold but that was the only possibility to "take a shower" :-)
In this weather camping actually is fun ! When we woke up we opened the tent and could see the vulcan bathed in the yellow light of the rising sun from our sleeping bags! chi! :-)
Unfortunatley here on this computer we cannot upload any images, but we will deliver them later to make you jealous ....

Now we are in Buenos Aires, visiting the bustling city at nice warm weather. The thousands of people, cars, buses and shops now are the total opposite of the national park before where we met about 5 people a day with nothing which looked like a shop in any way. :-)

Let`s see if we find some argentinian tango-event tonight.

We hope you are all fine and send you best regards and kisses from Bunos Aires.
Renate & Mirko

Chiloe

just a short entry with some pictures from Chiloe. A nice "little" Island in Chile or better it's a group of ilsands...with most of the houses made out of wood and lots of wooden churches and lot of good seafood (huge oyster for 70Cent a piece :-) ) it was a pleasant change from all the mountains and plains we have seen in Patagonia ... now we are back in the Argentinia ... Bariloche .. which actually locks a bit like in Switzerland ... we would have had this even w/o going around half of the world :-) tomorrow we head of to the Lanin National Park to make a hike around the Volcano which gave the park it's name ... at least there are no Volcanoes we know in Switzerland :-)
Mirko & Renate

back on land - Puerto Montt

Finally, after 3 days/4 nights on a ship bopping up and down on the waves, we are now back on solid ground and tonight we can sleep in a double bed again, instead of two tiny beds in a very small cabin which we shared with two more people ... they put an Dutch/Swiss couple together with an Austrian/German ... and it worked out very good .. it was actually very nice!

Basically the weather on this trip was bad and worse: rainy, cold with a lot of clouds and only sometimes one could imagine with a lot of phantasy that the nature around us would have been really wonderful with sunshine. bad luck!

One of the nights the sea was very turbulant and rough when traversing the "Golfo de Penas" (Golf of Pain) - and the name was not exaggerating - we thought we would be rolled out of our beds. Renate was fighting agains the sea-sickness by "meditating" :-) and Mirko achieved the same result after 2h of REAL PAIN by getting rid of all available alimentation in his body on our toilet ;-) ...
With us on board were hundreds of sheep, horses and cows .. I dont know how these poor creatures survived withouth being able to throw up :-)

... inspite of the bad weather and the fact that we were reminded 3 times each meal to return the tray to "the door behind the self-service" :-) it was an experience worth taking ...

At the moment we are on the island Chiloe which kind of resembles Irland ....

We send the best regards to all of you!
Renate & Mirko

... check the link for pictures ...

just a quick entry ...

View our new photos!! JUCHUUU!

-> National Park "Los Glaciares"
-> Trip north - Cuevas de Las Manos
-> Peninsula Valdes

:-)
Today we are boarding the ship for our 4 day trip north to "puerto Montt" along the chilenian fjords... at the moment the weather is fine.. hope this will stay so....
whish you all the best and we are looking forward to hearing from you again, when we again touch chilenian ground in 4 days! :-)

Renate & Mirko

fleeing the cold by heading north

After the cold of the national parks we slowly went a bit further north to escape the cold for a moment. Unfortunately (hm.. more or less :-) ) we need to be down there on the 8.3. again to step onto the boat we booked for a 4 days trip north along the chilenian fjords, which we booked earlier..
but in between we have now passed days heading north:
first we reached the east cost (piedra buena) where we wanted to visit nationalpark monte leon which is famous for a special rock fomation (unsere gute "olla" ) which looks like a giant ring of rock ..but in piedra buena they told us that this famous ring has collapsed last september... aha... hm...
so we continued to san julian where we could see .. NOTHING... hm... a town which really was so uninteresting...unbelievable.
then we did a day trip to an "estancia" with an excursion to caves with cave-paintings dating back 13.000 years.. this was really interesting! finally.. a successful mission again :-) ...
then we continued with a long nights bus drive up north to puerto madryn, where there is the national park "peninsula valdes" to be visited.
When we stepped off the bus yesterday we were so happy.. it was warm!!! JIPIIIIIEEHHH! we could walk without jackets and we saw people bathing in the sea and walking without shoes... woooowww..... today we could wear short trousers, t-shirt and sandals! perfect! we took a bike to view a colony of sea-lions which was sooo exciting.. they were.. all sleeping.... !!!! double-woooowww ;-)
on the way back mirko had a flat tire (.... too much chocolate ?? ;-) ) and we had to walk halfway back....
however: it was warm and sunny and we enjoyed the day very much!

we will drive south again on wednesday.... hear you!!!
Kisses! Renate & Mirko

Nationalpark "Los Glaciares"

Hallo, a bit late but better than never :-) .... we have completed our trekking in national park "Los Glaciares" where we did not have so much luck than in Torres del Paine. The weather was bad, bad, bad, bad and bad: it was freezing cold, windy, raining and snowing. The first day when we arrived there was no cloud in the sky and we were so happy to see Fity Roy and Cerro Torre with blue sky. Confidently we thought this would stay this way for the next days... haha... far off... when we woke up the next day, already having packed out bags for the trekking it was raining and the clouds were so thick that we could not see very far out of our window... :-( so we decided to delay our trekking start for one day... but the next day was the same... nearly.. maybe that little bit better than the day before so that we decided to take the chance...and hoped that it would clear and as soon as we arrived at the camp site of the first trekking day blue sky will be over us ... haha... during our walking it started snowing and the wind was so strong that our hands, noses and everything nearly froze! Nevertheless we errected our tent in a new time-record (it was so damn cold!!!!!) and were inside of our sleeping bags so fast...I was freezing really and had (for medical reasons :-)) eat nearly all our chocolate, muesliriegel and other sweet stuff (Mirko forgot to bring the nuts!!!! aaaahhh!) to reach some body temperature near to normal. I was so hungry, it was incredible! after a first warm-up we dared to get our again to cook a meal...brrrrrr... a big portion of rice for each of us... then back again into the tent and sleeping bag... no sun, only snow... and snow falling on the tent really makes a strange and uncomforting sound... let me tell you! in the morning of the next day it hat stopped snowing but it was still freezing cold and no sun or blue sky whatsoever.. also no mountains to see... we decided to give up and go back... no use hanging around here any longer (and remember: I ate nearly all of our sweets-proviant for the whole trek on the first day ;-) ) ... so back... but then mirko decided to go up to a mirador (viewpoint of Fitz Roy) at least to justify the effort to come here.. although there were still clouds... I didn`t... I went back directly.. we met later back in town in the hotel... where it was so cosy and warm!!! aahhh!!!
let me tell you the following which we want to share with you:
1) warm feet put into cold shoes -> result in cold feet immediately
2) there are a lot more of crazy people like us who camp out in the wilderness at snowfall than we thought
3) cold water takes a long time to reach boiling point but gets cold again quicker than you can make the first gulp of your tea
4) noses and hands OUT of sleeping bags get frozen off in no time
5) sleeping with a cap on result in uncontrollable weary hair in the next morning
6) cold hands touching mirko result in very loud cries and strong efforts to get me off... :-)

so....lesson closed... that was the trekking part... :-)
Renate y Mirko