12/3/98

Hi Guys and Girls

Well here we are back in Santiago and boy are we enjoying the smog. Since we last wrote we have had a pretty interesting few weeks. We arrived in Puerto Montt which is in the lake district of Chile which is a fantastic area filled with numerous beautiful lakes, thermal springs, glacial fjords and active volcanoes… all at the base of the Andes.

There’s heaps of fantastic trekking and climbing around here and we bummed around for a few days and soaked up some of the best seafood ever and salmon fresh from the ocean.

Initially Avril wanted to do a trek to a geyser field but the weather soon changed that idea. Which was OK since we were still nursing injuries from walking thru Torres del Paine.

So instead we visited Agua Calientes which if you remember your Sesame Street spanish means hot water.

Basically Agua Calientes is a thermally heated pool situated high in the Andean mountains, so we sat inside a beautifully hot chateau pool whilst watching volcanically heated steam rise off the lush forest on the mountains outside… is anyone jealous yet?

The weather was pretty crappy for about a week here, but that was cool because we had such good weather for trekking in the Torres…

However, a few days after we left Torres del Paine, it rained and snowed so hard that 70 backpackers had to be airlifted out of the park… Man we were sooo lucky…. El Nino strikes again. Continue reading →