21 July 2012… Six days to go! And an update from over the Andes in Chile. We’re sitting in Bram and Vivian’ 50 year old Dutch yawl in Valdivia, laptops tapping, Bram and Vivian solution centres whirring!
We should now be on the bus to Punta Arenas but school holidays and snow have conspired to foil our track south for the past week:
- Uruguayan “Plume Air” belly-flopped leaving stranded families flooding the ferries and huge delays. Our Uruguayan
“family” Geraldine and David amazingly managed to prize two tickets for us to cross the Rio Plata to Argentina. - Buenos Aires bus station was chaos, with all buses to Chile full or passes closed. So we stayed an extra day and caught an overnight bus south through Argentina and incredibly found a bus to the Chilean border the next night. One night later and we were finally crossing to Villarica… Hoorah!
- We set up camp in Octavio and Fiona’s house.. and Dave made the trailer under the intense view of the local pack of children!
- More full buses and a full pick-up of kit and people to Valdivia and we are stranded 3 days behind schedule. But with office, video and bed problems solved thanks to Bram and Viv.. we have time to catch up on the project.
- Next hiccup; our Patagonia kit is stranded somewhere in Chile and we’re critically one down jacket and a waterproof coat short.
- Luckily Dave’ sister, Fiona, has come to the rescue and we have a replacement; a heavier option than we had planned for, but at least we have something to counter a Patagonian winter!
- Fiona has decided to run the first section with us from Cabo Froward to Punta Arenas. This is the off-road, no path, snow-filled and fording icy peaking river part! So we’ll be leaving the trailer in Punta Arenas and running mountain marathon style with the essentials (camping and food) on our backs.
- Good news; we have a ticket tomorrow for Bariloche, just across the Andes in Argentina. There we drop a bag of kit with friends, Loli and Rafra and hopefully catch an overnight bus south to Punta Arenas tomorrow night…..?!
