August 1, 2019 – August 4, 2019
The ferry from Newfoundland to Labrador actually lands a few kilometres south of the east-west Labrador/Quebec border in the remote town of Blanc Sablon. From here you can drive about 70 kilometres east along the south shore of Quebec, then take a series of ferries to hop from town to town, or you can drive north into Labrador. We headed north.
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February 4, 2019 – February 8, 2019
El Chaltén is a small village full of outdoor gear shops, hostels, cervecerias, bake shops and restaurants, all focused on servicing the thousands of visitors that come during the short summer season to hike in the surrounding Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. It is a fun and friendly little town, whose existence is completely reliant on tourism.
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January 7, 2019 – January 14, 2019
(Grab a coffee, tea or beer…..it’s a bit of a long post……)
We camped for a night in a small town called Puyuhuapi, situated at the end of a long fjord, in a small area behind a woman’s house. We were there with several other tourists, all of which were either travelling by bike or by hitchhiking. It had been very rainy, and I was thankful for our warm camper but felt guilty about our luxury when I walked by the chilled tenters on my way to the bathroom. But they were young, and they had a wood stove to gather around, and a little discomfort can increase the sense of adventure….ha ha, easy for me to say as I sipped my warm coffee from the comfort of our toasty camper.
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January 1, 2019 – January 7, 2019
The Carretera Austral is a 1,240 kilometre road that runs from Puerto Montt to Villa O’Higgins, through mountains and forests, around fjords, lakes and glaciers, and relies on a couple of longer ferry crossings where the terrain is just too challenging for road construction. Work on the highway began in 1976. It was opened to traffic in 1988 and the last 100 kilometres to Villa O’Higgins were only completed in the year 2000. The road winds through remote areas of what is know as Chile’s Northern Patagonia region and we were very excited to be finally making our way into this region that is so famous for its beauty.
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December 14, 2018 – December 19, 2018
The town of Bariloche in the Lakes District of Argentina is a place that we had known about long before embarking on this trip. As we got closer and did more research, however, we kept running into one troubling piece of information….it seemed that Bariloche has had a bit of a problem with petty theft and vehicle break ins. Just a day or two before we were planning to arrive we had read about a couple who had parked on the street and went for a coffee in a nearby shop. Half an hour later they returned to find their vehicle had been broken into and the thieves took almost everything they owned. Overlanders, we read, were being targeted in Bariloche, as the thieves knew there would be computers, cameras, iPads and other goodies on board. We decided one lake town is as good as another, so we blew through Bariloche and headed to El Bolson, a town reputed to have a more relaxed vibe that had become popular with the “hippies” in the seventies.
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December 13, 2018 – December 14, 2018
We had read about a restaurant in the town of Villa de Angostura that we wanted to visit, called Tinto Bistro. It is run by the brother of the Queen of Holland (Queen Maxima is originally from Argentina).
The restaurant was great. For starters we had trout wrapped in pastry and a veal and salmon tartar. For our main dish Derek ordered ribeye steak, and I had lamb. We also had beautiful sweet deserts. We also ordered a very nice bottle of Argentinian Syrah red wine from the lower end of a list that topped out in the Cdn$1000s. We’re pretty sure that in Canada, the wine alone would have cost more than the whole meal. This all, after having washed up and put on clean clothes in the camper in our stealth camping spot in a parking lot close to downtown….we do what we can.
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December 8, 2018 – December 13, 2019
We camped for a night on an island in a river that runs through the town of Junin de los Andes, then headed to San Martin de los Andes, which reminded us very much of Banff townsite, with its outdoor gear shops and candy stores. The next day we headed out of town towards the border with Chile where we camped for a couple of nights in a free park-run campsite at the end of a mountain lake….I will let the photos tell the rest.
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December 1, 2018 – December 2, 2018
Our guide book for Argentina is not very good. It highlights a few regions of Argentina, but is more focused on luxury hotels and expensive restaurants, and gives only a few highlights of things to do, in only a few regions of the country. So we didn’t really have a plan for what we wanted to see and do in between the larger, well known sites in Argentina. We looked at our map and at iOverlander, and decided to head to Lago Caviahue for a night.
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October 19, 2018 – October 23, 2018
We were pleased to be on our way to a reserve that we had been dreaming about since we first started planning this trip. We had seen many images of Reserva Nacional de Fauna Andina Eduardo Avaroa (I know, quite the mouthful) and were excited at the prospects of being at this really remote, high altitude area in southern Bolivia.