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Travel tips for Torres del Paine National Park in Chile
Ever since we saw Torres del Paine in Chile on tv about 12 years ago, we knew one thing for sure: this is a place we had to go to one day. This world famous park encompasses spectacular mountains, multi-colored lakes, glaciers, lots of wildlife and a magic touch that you will never understand unless you have been there. By December 2009 we had saved up enough after buying our house and it was our time to head south to Patagonia! We spent about a week in the park, hiking the W-trek and enjoying the outstanding beauty of this place. In 2012 I got the chance to go back again and stayed for three…
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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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Bariloche: bucketlist or tourist trap?
There is this thing about Bariloche that kept me away from it for years. Maybe it was because Argentineans like to take their vacations there so it was bound to be very touristc, or maybe it was because they say it looks like Switzerland – with their mountains, lakes and chocolates. As Switzerland is “just around the corner” for us, I didn’t really feel the need to fly all the way to the other side of the world to see just that. Some people I talked to rave about Bariloche, some people say it was utterly disappointing when you compare it to the rest of Patagonia. When I accidentally won…
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Cape Horn: the end of the world
There are some places in the world that you think you will never go to. Although “never say never” is our motto, we should probably say “some places we most likely will never go to”. Cape Horn, also known as the last piece of land on earth before Antarctica, is such a place. And yet we managed to go there, to this tiny piece of land far away from the rest of the world … Cape Horn was discovered quite late in history. After various attempts in the 16th century, it was eventually the Dutch to reach Cape Horn first in the 17th century. Explorers Willem Corneliszoon Schouten and Jacob…