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Climbing Villarrica Volcano: the uncomfortable truth
Approximately one and a half year ago I was on a press trip in Curaçao with a bunch of other bloggers, as well as a journalist from a big Dutch newspaper. She did not have a clue about blogging and at some point asked me if I wrote about things I didn’t like. I told her that it’s my choice not to do that most of the time, because for me blogging is a hobby and should be fun. I’m not a reporter, I’m just someone who writes because she likes to. However, as I’m doing a round-up of the roadtrip through Patagonia we made last year, I just could…
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What do to on a morning in Puyehue National Park
After returning to our car soaking wet from Cochamó, we’d pretty much had enough of the rain. More than enough. But as the weather is not something you can change, we just had to deal with it and make the best of it. After a couple of short stops at the bottom of Osorno volcano for some short walks and getting an empanada for lunch in Ensanada (I never had so much emapanadas in my life before as during this trip) it was time to continue our journey up north and hopefully leave the rain behind. We drove along the shores of Lago Llanquihue (which I can only remember as Yankee-Way,…
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Hiking to Cochamó, aka Chile’s Yosemite
There are places you exactly remember how you got around to going there. Cochamó in Chile is one of those places. Martijn showed me something he had found on the American Alpine Club’s website. We stayed at one of their ranches earlier that summer (Grand Teton Climber’s Ranch) and we were looking for ideas for our next trip. So he came up with Cochamó. It’s also described as the Yosemite of Chile and a hiker’s and climber’s paradise. Since we already had planetickets to South America, it was an easy decision to head out over there. After staying in Petrohue for the night, it was time to gather our stuff for a…
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The best places for seeing icebergs
“An iceberg is a large piece of freshwater ice that has broken off a glacier or an ice shelf and is floating freely in open water.” (Source: Wikipedia) The first time I saw an iceberg I was amazed. A big chunk of ice, floating in a lake, without melting just like that, despite the temperature being quite high. I could have looked at it forever, slowly melting and eventually dissolving in the water, like it had never been there. Somehow, ever since, I’ve always been amazed by icebergs. Where they come from, how they are formed and where they are going. Fortunately, you don’t have to A) travel to the north or south pole and/or B) have a lot of…
