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Please join me on my journey through South America 30 years ago.
After two friends came back from a backpacking trip through South America with all their fascinating stories, all I could think of was that I had to go there.
I did and my travels took me to Curaçao, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil.
I had no idea of how long I would travel but in the end it where almost 15 months.
Times have changed a lot since then. Just thinking back about the fact that I camped in the ruins of Machu Picchu, something that would be completely unthinkable these days.
The quality of my photography at that time was not the best so I only picked the slides that are worth looking at.
On the map below, I marked the rough route that I did.
Venezuela was the real starting point of my journey, but before traveling to Venezuela, I stayed with a friend in Curaçao for some time.
Caracas the capital city where I first arrived on the continent gave me my first lesson in South American democracy. On the first day on a stroll through the centre of town, a police truck stopped right before me. The police jumped out of their bus started to beat down what seemed to be students, loaded them in to the truck and of they went.
That left me, coming from liberal Amsterdam just shocked.
Anyhow, I did not come to change the system or start a revolution so I kept quiet
One landscape that I really wanted to see in Venezuela was La Gran Sabana. It lies in the south east of Venezuela on the border with Brazil.
In those days, this was gold digger area and probably still is. The little towns on the road towards Brazil looked like a Wild West movie. Men with pistols hanging from their waists, little stalls buying and selling gold, bars and prostitutes everywhere. This is what the Wild West in the US must have been like.
Anyhow, I was there to see the tabletop mountains named Tepuis and my main aim was a tour into the interior. After leaving the main road, I ended up in a place called Kanavayen that I choose as a kind of base camp for the several hiking trips that I did in the area.
Tabletop mountains in the Gran Sabana
The Gran Sabana has lots of waterfalls
I hitch hiked back towards civilization but did not make it in one go as I ran in to an American couple doing research on the harpy eagle (world largest eagle). They asked me if I wanted to join them into the rainforest where they had their observatory. I gladly did but sadly, no eagle showed up that day.
Colombia After some more adventures in Venezuela I finally ended up in Colombia. The first thing that gets to my memory is sitting on a bus in Cucuta (my diary says it was criminal too) and it was so damned hot that I really wanted to get off and travel another day.
However, the bus took me to Malaga and the trip was great, passing through the Andes on a dirt road with magnificent scenery. Indigenous people on their horses with their bright colourful ponchos. Next day took me to a place called el Cocuy where I planned a trekking tour in the el Cocuy national park.
El Cocuy
The trek itself had something of a bad omen; it started to rain as I left el Cocuy on the milk truck (the only vehicle that goes towards the park, at least then). The trek itself was magnificent with all kind of strange plants that I had never seen before.
Landscape in the el Cocuy national park
After a second day of rain and the crossing of a high pass in snowy conditions, I decided to turn back instead of continuing my route.
When I finally hit the road again, I was completely wet and so was my gear.
I asked the indigenous family at the first house that I passed if I could stay there. They saw the emergency and took me in. Mama put me straight into bed and tried to heath me up with a hot potato soup. After the soup and the warm bed, I slowly warmed up. What wonderful people taking in a complete stranger with the little that they have.
What a shame that I could never really thank them for what they did for me.
The family that took care of me
After my el Cocuy adventure, the gringo trail took me to the colonial town of Villa de Leiva.
Beautiful Villa de Leiva
Luckily the week I arrived there was a festival going on.
Lucky me a festival and the also such a wonderful place. Waiting for the festival to start, I even had some time to go for a two-day hike in the area.
Market day in Villa de Leiva
From Villa de Leiva I travelled to Bogota, at that time not the best place to be as Pablo Escobar had his fingers everywhere.
I stayed in a cheap hotel in the red light area in Bogota and shared my room with a German called Thomas.
We left the Hotel early in the morning in search of a place where we could have breakfast. Instead of finding a nice restaurant, we were witnesses of a murder. The mafia or narcos as they are called in Colombia stabbed someone to death right in front of us.
Why and what exactly happened will always be a mystery to me.
All we could do was run away as fast as we could, last thing I wanted was spending time in a Colombian jail!
Next stop was San Augustin, known for its stone sculptures that nobody really knows much about.
What a wonderful place it turned out to be.
Stone sculptures in San Augustin (Tin Tin must have been here) (Tim und Struppi)
This was the first time in my travels that I thought about the thing of settling at a magic place like this.
In years to come I would visit a few more places where I had the same thoughts.
I did a few hikes in the area mainly along the Magdalena River. After my travels through Colombia, I realized that this area was Colombia at its best. However, usually you first notice that afterwards.
Street scene during one of the hikes in the area
I hooked up with a few other travellers here and we spend Christmas together. We bought a turkey that we called Johnny together and had a feast meal that I will never forget… Sorry for all you vegetarians reading this story.
From San Agustin I moved on to Popayan, a beautiful colonial town.
One of the things that stick to my mind was the impressive bus ride (7 hours for 135km) through wild country.
Only one bus a day and only at daytime because of leftist guerrillas.
Well can´t be that bad I thought but I was thought the better when I met 3 other tourist that were robbed the day before as the bus was held up on the same route. They and the locals on the bus had to hand in all their valuables at gunpoint. In those days Colombia was not the safest place to be and
Therefore not too many tourists in the country. After spending the New Year in this town, it was time to move on to the next country Ecuador.
Ecuador I would spend quite some time in this country as there is a lot to see and most places are easy accessible. Ecuador was dirt-cheap at that time so all the backpackers on a tight budget like me choose to hang out here instead of expensive countries.
One of the first places that I heard of on the trail radio was Baños, so there I went.
The village had hot springs in town and it was just a nice place to hang out.
Nearby was the volcano of Tungurahua with its 5016 meters of altitude that longed to be climbed by me.
So after a few relaxing days I headed out for the climb and made it to the summit.
Climbing the Tungurahua volcano
Next I did was a hike around the volcano of Cotopaxi. It took me a couple of days to walk around it and the weather was not good so I only had very few sights of this beautiful shaped volcano.
Hiking around the volcano Cotopaxi with pretty shitty weather (the best view that I got during the hike)
After I finished the walk and I reached civilisation the locals informed me that the US had invaded Kuwait. I was shocked and had this feeling that the third world war started but I could not check it out before I reached the capital Quito.
Nobody here could give me precise information and most people didn´t seem to care. Well looking back I can understand it. Kuwait is a country far away and if you have never been further as the market of the next village, it is difficult to comprehend the whole thing.
It was time for something else as I had enough of shitty weather so I went to the pacific ocean to a small island called Muisne and stayed for a long log time.
Endless beach at Muisne
After Muisne I went to the village of Otavalo, a peaceful indigenous village where I spend a few days and did a couple of day hikes in the area.
The woman doing the laundry, a scene during one of my many hikes in the area
Ciucocha crater lake
Cattle market at Otavalo
Local woman
Slowly it was time to move south to try and make it to southern Chile and Argentina to catch the end of the season before the fall/winter would make traveling (rain) impossible.
I met up with a Carla from the US in Quito and together we decided to travel southern Chile.
From now on a part of the trip would be the two of us.
Next stop we went for was Cuenca. We had the funny experience of arriving here during carnival. In this town, the people have the habit of throwing water at each other. Locals would even drive pickup trucks with barrels of water through the streets and soke everybody with a bucket of water that would not get out of the way fast enough. Well when you are wet you can´t get wet anymore so you just join the play. The main reason for going to Cuenca is that the town is a beautiful colonial one but not too far from the town, there is the national park called las Cajas. It is a high altitude park covered with lakes.
We got hold of a map and figured out that it should be possible to cross the park with a compass and hit the road on the other side. Three others travellers wanted to join in so of we went the five of us.
As we crossed our first pass, we sat down just below the ridge out of the wind. Probably because we were out of sight two condors “sailed” over the pass just above our heads. They were so close we could almost touch them….WAUW magic.
Las cajas national park
Hiking through this "wilderness" on good luck and a compass
After the las Cajas hike, we travelled to Guayaquil (fucking hot and damp place) and from there towards the border with Peru.
By the way, we all think that the worst thing that destroys rain forest is palm oil plantations but years before we ever heard about palm oil, all the rain forest in the Guayaquil area was destroyed to make way for bananas.
I remember driving through banana plantations for hundreds of kilometres!
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Peru The fastest way to cross Peru all the way to Chile was by air. We looted our tight budget and bought ourselfs a flight ticket from Tumbes to Tacna. Half way I regretted this as we caught heavy turbulence and I thought it was the end.
People screaming, luggage everywhere and a whole lot of ave Marias.
Well the Ave Maria probably did it so we made it in one part and had a smooth touch down in Tacna.
Chile Our first pleasure in Chile was a 30-hour bus ride from Arica to the capital Santiago. We had enough of flying for the moment so that was no option. Better to sit in a bus for a long time as to fall out of the air. The bus ride was pretty boring as the ride is mainly through dessert landscape that didn´t really change
After so much uncomfort the next form of transport was a train to Puerto Montt.
The train was old but from the inside, I had the feeling of being in the orient express.
This was a lovely way of travel and there even was a cinema abroad!
Puerto Montt
Seafood market on the shore of Puerto Montt
The next trekking spot we aimed for was a trek along the coastal shore of Chiloe. The hike started on the outskirts of Ancud and finished at a settlement called Chepu. We had no maps are what so ever but would just see how far we would get. It was a rough hike with rain and lots of mud but it was a beautiful one and I still think back about this hike every now and then. Due to the steep shores in some areas, the lumber industry never set foot here so this was Chile as it was before the settlers moved in.
Hiking the Chiloe coast
Magical camping spot
Local farmers lost in time
Chilean wilderness on the island Chiloe
Camping spot on the beach
At the end of the hike, the local clam fisher invited us to the local football game at a nearby dwelling. The weather was great and we ended up drunk on Chilean wine in the sun.
Chilean wine out of melons on a lazy Sunday
Camping on the shore in Puerto Montt and preparing salmon dinner
Getting down to Patagonia was not that easy those days. There was no major tourism going on and buses south were few.
We checked our possibilities but the next seat on a bus for us was weeks ahead, so we decided to stay in the area and go for a couple of hikes in the Chilean Argentinian border area.
The season was slowly ending so it was the smartest thing to do.
So we hopped on a bus to Petrohue and from there to Laguna Verde. Here we couldn´t believe our eyes that we could camp on the lakeside with the following view!
Camping on the beach in front of Osorno
Next day the ferry took us across to Puella crossing Lago todos los santos. It was so beautiful it could have been Canada or some other magic place.
Argentina From Peulla our hike started (still in Chile) and we crossed the border into Argentina on foot. We had pretty bad weather with lots of rain but what a hike it was.
We scrammled through bushes and climbed over fallen trees all the way up to Mount Tronador and its hanging glacier. It was like a fairy tale and we could have been the hobbits!
We climbed the Passo de las nubes with great views on Laguna Frias if we dared to look back.
Lago Frias
Accent towards the pass
Camping spot below mount Tronador
At a beautiful camping spot like this we decided to have a rest day. Well we couldn´t handle a full rest day so we climbed mount Tronador as far as we could till crevases made a further accent impossible.
Nice photo on a half way climb of mount Tronador
Next day we had to continue and the trail went down the mountain. We saw condors on our way down and got excited because of puma tracks that we saw crossing a stream.
Puma where are you?
After hitting then road, we hitch hiked our way to Bariloche.
We found a cheap hotel and were happy to escape the rain.
Next day we changed hotel, as our skin was full with little bed bug bites…Yes sometimes being on a budget really gets you.
Someone told me about a restaurant on the outskirts of town were old nazi guys gather in the evening. Well young and ignorant as I was, I decided to go and have a look. Well they were there and until today, I am shocked how openly they saluted each other.
We hitch hiked to Lago Guitierrez and camped on the lakeshore to start our next hike.
We skipped one day on the lakeshore just. Weather was great so we just hung out doing nothing but sleeping and swimming.
The hike lay in the Cerro Catedral area, not unknown in the Bariloche region, as it is a very special place.
Almost bits of Alps touch with the refugios in the park.
The trail we did was Refugio Frey, Refugio Jakob, Laguna los Tempanos, Cerro Navidad, Refugio Laguna Negra and from there back to Bariloche.
Just check out the pictures for the fine landscape.
Pictures of the Cerro Caterdral hike
Our camping spot close to the summit of cerro Navidad
The weather was slowly changing and rain was on our back as the season was ending.
We decided to move up north back to Chile.
To be continued!
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