Australia: Christmas, caves and Claire's arrival

After leaving Tasmania behind, I'd taken up residence with my Uncle Les in Mittagong, south of Sydney, so that I could spend Christmas with family. So far we'd retrieved my grandad from the airport and visited the Blue Mountains. Somehow, I am dealing with living with two grumbly, but lovely old men.

Leftovers for tea again

A lovely, relaxed Christmas Eve morning was balanced by an afternoon drive around the area with Linda and her younger son while Uncle Les did... whatever it is that needed doing for the Christmas meal. First stop, Avon Dam, with pretty views.

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And then on to Nepean Dam, which also had lovely views and also the somewhat disconcerting sound of thunder closing in...

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Finally a quick stop at a small animal sanctuary, where the wallabies were sensibly trying to shelter from the incoming storm.

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And so came the storm. Pretty sure it's The Storm, the one that follows me around. It certainly seemed angry enough.

And then sleep. Always, sleep. Oh, and reading of that Pratchett book I picked up, which is rather good.

Merry Christmas!

There isn't a whole lot to say about Christmas. It's a big family affair with my uncle, not like the quiet thing I have at home. Still, there was enough food to last out a zombie apocalypse and Secret Santa brought me cider. All round, a pretty awesome day.

I don't think I've eaten that much since I left the UK... So stuffed.

It's not that far

On Boxing Day, Uncle Les took us to Morton National Park, where I had to deal with the ticket machine because after 5 minutes of watching my uncle and grandad struggling with it, I thought I'd best do something. Not entirely sure what they were doing wrong, but it worked first time for me...

First stop, the Echo Point lookout, over this beautiful valley.

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And then to the Wishing Well, which is clearly a man made hole in the rock and not really what I was expecting.

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Finally, a short walk down to the old Erith Coal Mine. And I mean short. The sign said something like 1.2k return. OK, so it's down a big old hill, but it's not very far.

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The mine is all shut up, but some of the props still seem to be in there.

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Apparently there used to be a railway running to the cliff edge above the mine and they'd hoist the coal up there instead of having to cart it out by the hill. The hill which we then had to climb again. The way my uncle described it afterwards, you'd think we'd walked miles...

And then Christmas leftovers for tea. This is going to become a running theme.

Do you think it likes eggs?

The following day, Linda rescued me from another day of grumbling by taking all three of us on a trip to Wombeyan Caves.

Access is via a dirt road, which initially I thought was total awesomesauce. An hour or more in, I started getting travel sick, courtesy of all the twists. Urgh. Nice. Fortunately we weren't too far from the caves and once I got out of the car I was fine. Besides, one of the first things I spotted was this goanna.

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I'm a huge Disney fan. Rescuers Down Under is one of my favourites and so of course I started stalking this goanna, calling it Joanna and asking if it wanted eggs. I don't think anyone heard me...

First stop, Victoria Arch. Pretty.

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And then on to our guided tour of Wollondilly Cave with the excellently named, somewhat insane, John Mango. Here, have a slightly out of focus photo of the prettiness inside the cave.

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And maybe another?

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It was nice and even better because it was cooler than outside and had no winged demons to bite me. Ultimately, though, I've seen more interesting caves.

And so back onto different dirt road back to civilisation. Via McDonalds where I filched the free WiFi and tried to find out when Claire was arriving on Thursday and how to get into our AirBnB. I hate being so reliant on WiFi.

And so to sleep.

Um... I have control?

On my last day in Mittagong, my uncle's brother-in-law offered to take me and my grandad on a little sightseeing flight over the area. He co-owns a small plane and teaches folks to fly, so I thought this was a great idea.

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I was not expecting to get to fly the damn thing. But a minute or two into the flight, having explained how the basic controls worked, Ken told me I could have a go. So I hesitantly confirmed that I had control and that was it.

I flew a fucking plane.

I thought it'd be for a few minutes, but I had control for the entire flight up until landing. It was both terrifying and pretty damn awesome.

This would also explain why I have precisely zero photos from the plane, but plenty of us on the ground. Look at me, looking stupid in the pilot's seat...

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She's a cool little Piper. Wouldn't mind having another go. Cheers, Ken.

Apparently nothing else on this day even came close to making an impression on me, because all my journal says after "I flew a fucking plane! :)" is "not sure what else happened here?"

I hear a Northern hemisphere accent - would you like some ice?

After my flailing with Macca's WiFi a couple of days prior, Claire had managed to text me late on the Thursday night (my time) to tell me the flight was delayed. Unfortunately, by the time I got that text, Grandad and Uncle Les had already gone to bed with the intention of getting up early to accompany me to the airport. This despite my assurance that I was more than capable of getting on the train on my own. Bless.

So we left early, drove to the station and hopped on the train. I believe my uncle was going to take my grandad into Sydney for the day, but I never got confirmation on that. I honestly thought the pair of them were going to cry when I got off the train at the airport after hugs and goodbyes and being pressed with more coffee money than I could ever need. It had been a really lovely week being surrounded by almost-familiar people instead of the constant stream of strangers you get travelling.

Still, I was going to retrieve Claire and that meant another two weeks of familiarity. Despite the delay to her flight on leaving, she arrived near enough on time and after acquiring an Opal card for her and topping up mine, we hopped on the train into the city.

I hadn't thought it through. Normally, I'm pretty good with public transport. I'd figured we'd get the train out to Lewisham, the nearest stop to our AirBnB rental and then get a bus from there.

There was no bus. Claire was melting in the 35 degree heat, which coupled with her jetlag was not great. In the end, I had to use a payphone to call a taxi, which took us the 10 minutes down the road to the AirBnB.

At this point, all should have been well. The info I had from our AirBnB host implied that someone would be home to let us into the annex. No one answered the door. For ages. So we went round the corner to a cafe so I could grab some breakfast and Claire could rehydrate. Going from freezing in the UK to melting in Australia can't have been much fun.

In the meantime, I sent a message to our host to say that we were having trouble getting in and promptly received a call back to say that her brother should be around to let us in. So we tramped back and tried again. Still no response. I even tried sticking my hand through the gate to see if I could open the lock. Apparently even my hands were not skinny enough for that.

Meanwhile, Claire's melting into a puddle in the front yard. We'd already tried the neighbours to see if they had a number for the brother, but had no luck. After a while, the neighbours appeared again, said hi and came out with a line that made my day.

"I hear a Northern hemisphere accent. Would you like some ice? And some water?"

Thank you, unnamed neighbours. Having saved Claire from completely disintegrating, I sent our host another message regarding our inability to get in and was delighted when she got straight back to me with instructions to get into the key box. More than an hour after we arrived, we finally got in.

With the day rapidly wearing away, we refreshed and caught up and then headed off to find some food. Ended up at a little Italian place at the end of the street where I had the most delicious gnocchi with gorgonzola. So good.

And then Claire passed out on the bed when we got back. Poor thing.

Of course we need funny shaped ice cubes...

With Claire feeling a bit better the following morning, we caught the bus into the city and went for a wander.

First stop, Darling Harbour, which was busy and also home to a visitor centre selling koala, kanagaroo and Australia shaped ice cube trays. With the temperature still in the 30s, we decided we might have to come back and buy them. We resisted for a while though, mooching off around the harbour with the aim of getting to the Rocks, one of the oldest parts of Sydney. Passed the Harbour Bridge on the way.

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We had a wander around the Rocks before popping into the Opera House to book a tour. Hey, we can't afford to see a show there (and I don't think we were interested in anything that was playing), so the next best thing is a tour, right?

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Then on to the Rocks Discovery Museum, which was kind of interesting and also free, which is always a bonus.

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Onwards, up to the Observatory where I geeked out about science things and we also got to go into one of the telescope domes.

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At this point, I was amazed that Claire hadn't completely collapsed from the heat and residual jetlag. I think it started kicking in on the way back to the bus stop though, when we had to stop for gelato.

And then well and truly collapsed when we got back to the AirBnb. Oh dear.

Plenty of sleep needed, because next we have New Year's Eve in Sydney to negotiate as well as Claire's birthday. A few more days in Sydney and then we're flying to Alice Springs in preparation for our trip to Uluru.

You think Sydney's hot? Ain't seen nothing yet...

Australia: Tasmania Coast to Coast

After spending a few days in Hobart, revisiting old favourites and a couple of new ones, I'd caught the bus up to Launceston in the north and planned on spending a few days exploring before heading over to the West Coast. Here's how that went.

So. Un. Fit.

On my first morning in Launceston, I woke up stupidly early and a little sleep deprived courtesy of the two snoring monsters in my dorm. This may explain my confusion when there was breakfast laid out in the kitchen despite me being pretty sure there wasn't free breakfast. Still, with no one else around to tell me otherwise, I helped myself to a couple of slices of bread and was just fishing them out of the toaster when someone appeared in the kitchen.

"That's for a private group," she said, giving me the evils. Sleep-deprived me apologised profusely but failed to point out that I could hardly return the now-toasted bread. Slightly more awake me thankfully kept her mouth shut, but really wanted to point out that there was no way for me to know that it wasn't part of the hostel services and there was no need to be giving me evils. Ugh.

Having avoided that argument, I clambered onto my minibus with Graeme, our guide and driver for the day. Scary ass driver.

We made it safely to Ross, which is a pretty little village with a rather elaborate convict-built bridge.

It also had an excellent bakery that sold scallop pies, so that was my tea sorted. 

Onwards! Down the winding road to the east coast. Whether it was because I hadn't slept much or because Graeme was a terrifying driver, I ended up feeling sick. 

Fortunately for me, I fell asleep for most of it and by the time I woke up we were coming up on the little town of Coles Bay, gateway to Freycinet National Park.

First stop, Cape Tourville Lighthouse. Glorious views, a very short walk and a rather disappointing lighthouse.

And back on the bus to Wineglass Bay, supposedly home to one of the world's best beaches. I had no intention of going down to the beach. I remembered the climb up to the lookout from 6 years ago and that seemed quite enough to me.

So I marched up to the lookout in less time than expected, scowled at people getting in the way of my photos and started the trek back down again. A few minutes down from the lookout I heard someone call me and turned to find a couple of American girls from my group beckoning for me to join them. Some scrambling later, I managed to clamber up onto the huge boulder by the path and enjoyed a nice, sociable lunch for a change. Lovely.

Back down at the bus, we headed back up the peninsula to Honeymoon Bay, actually a series of little bays scooped out of the gorgeous red rock. Not content with sitting around and enjoying the view, I embraced my inner child and went scrambling over the rocks in search of the third bay, away from the crowds. Here goes... One.

Two.

Three.

Success. The water was the most amazing colour and so clear. At that point, Honeymoon Bay shifted somewhere near the top of my favourite places list.

From there, a short stop at Richardson's Beach, where I claimed the sand for New New Grimsby, as per New Zealand roadtrip tradition.

And so onwards, back out of the park to the Devil's Corner Lookout. Not much of a lookout - I think the haze was messing things up. The cafe did nice muffins though as well as a sorely needed cuppa.

Then an uneventful ride back to Launceston, where I scoffed my delicious scallop pie with some new potatoes and an enormous cup of tea. I needed it.

I can see the mountain!

Another early start beckoned on the Sunday morning. Dragging myself out of bed, I boarded the minibus and found that my driver for the day was once again crazy Graeme. Awesome.

First stop, the little bakery cafe at Elizabeth Town where I picked up a couple of bits of deliciousness. From there, on down the back roads to Sheffield, town of murals. I recall visiting there last time I was in northern Tasmania, but I missed most of the murals. Besides, there's some new ones now, including this one with Tim Minchin on it.

This resulted in me getting Tim Minchin's songs stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Worse things have happened. Aside from the murals, Sheffield doesn't have much going for it, so then it was off to Cradle Mountain, the main destination for the day.

Last time I went there, accompanied by one of my lovely housemates, it pissed it down with rain the entire day and we didn't actually see the mountain because of the cloud. We could barely see Dove Lake, which sits at the bottom of it.

This time the sky was cloudy but bright and the view was amazing.

I toddled off on a lovely 2 hour walk around the lake, during which I wandered through a fragment of ancient forest that made me feel like I'd stumbled into Mirkwood.

And then I made friends with a Black Currawong that was clearly trying to creep up on me and steal my lunch. Clever little buggers.

With another hour or more to kill, I took a very short side trip down to Lake Lilla, pondering whether to tackle the hill up to Wombat Pool. I made it to Lake Lilla.

One look at the track up to Wombat Pool made me turn around and head back to Dove Lake. I haven't done enough walking so far on this trip and I didn't really fancy the steep slope. Wuss.

Sitting by Dove Lake, admiring the beautiful view and the (almost) peace and quiet, was rudely interrupted by a guy sitting a few metres away who suddenly shot up shouting that there was a snake. I want to see a snake. I've never seen a like snake. Still, the urge to tick something off my mental wildlife-spotting list couldn't quite override the basic human instinct to stay as far away from the bitey animal as possible.

From Dove Lake we headed back up the road a little way to Ronny Creek, where there are wombats. I have a love-hate relationship with wombats. On the one hand they're sort of cute and appealing. On the other, I got chased by one while on a field trip in Narawntapu National Park. So I wasn't entirely happy with how close Graeme was leading us to this guy.

Fortunately, this wombat was far more interested in getting away from the nebbing tourists than chasing us off. A quick stop at Waldheim, home of the guy who first suggested Cradle Mountain should be a national park and then we were off again.

And I saw my second echidna of the day, but given that I always seem to spot echidna from moving vehicles, I have no photos. Guh. Cute little buggers.

Final stop for the day was Ashgrove Farm which produces the most delicious cheese I've had in months. So of course I decided to treat myself to some. They also had cider. I haven't had cider since I was in Canada and that wasn't great. Outside the UK, cider just doesn't seem to exist. But I was willing to give this one a try.

Back home at the hostel after a glorious day of walking and wildlife, I cracked into the bottle. Best cider I've had since leaving home. Not as good as Henney's, but good enough. Yum.

Yes, I am a child

I started Monday with a glorious lie in after two days of early starts. JOY. Then I had a productive morning of bus booking and grocery shopping before heading across the road to the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery (QVMAG). I was far too happy to find that all of the interactive displays from 6 years ago were still there and spent far too long indulging my inner child.

There's also a surprisingly good collection of dinos for such a small museum, plus a fascinating display about the wreck of the Sydney Cove. This ship foundered on an island off Tasmania's north coast and while there's some interesting artefacts from both the wreck and its cargo, I think the most amazing bit was this.

On the left is a bottle of ale recovered from the wreck. The seal held, so the ale in there hasn't been contaminated by the seawater. Scientists were able to extract yeast from these bottles and use it to brew a new batch of ale over a century after the ship went down. That's what the bottle on the right is. That's some great science there.

The museum also has a great WWI exhibition, including a somewhat terrifying sound and light simulation of what the men in the trenches would have heard. It's loud. Scarily loud. I think my sister will appreciate the Siegfried Sassoon poem at the end of the experience.

And then I rounded out my day with a solo trip to the cinema to see Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, which was rather better than I expected.

I think I had a plastic one of those...

After another glorious lie in, I spent the morning reading my new Pratchett book and generally being a lazy mare. I made up for it by heading back to QVMAG in the afternoon to check out the bits of the museum I'd missed the day before, including a great temporary exhibition about the Permian era. It's not something I see covered that often even in natural history museums, so I had to have a look.

The Permian is the geological period just before the Triassic and therefore just before the age of dinosaurs. Evolution was doing some interesting things at this time, with a whole host of bizarre looking critters floating about, including this nightmare possible-shark called Helicoprion.

As far as I'm aware, it's only known from the fossilised tooth-whorl and has been colloquially known as the buzzsaw shark for obvious reasons. Very odd. The Permian was also the period during which mammal-like reptiles flourished. Mammals themselves wouldn't evolve until after the end-Permian extinction event, but there were some early precursors running around before then. Like these little guys whose name is escaping me... bad scientist. Google tells me it's either a dicynodont or a cynodont (the latter being mammal ancestors).

Still, I think Dimetrodon is my favourite Permian critter. Big and ungainly with a huge sail down its back.

I had a plastic one as a child. I think that says something about how far back my geekery goes. I wonder if it's still in the tub at my nanna's?

Paleontology fix achieved, I decided to go and geek out about locomotives instead. See this shiny red train, built in Launceston.

The whole museum actually takes up what used to be Launceston's engine yard and workshops and they've kept a few of the original features including this bench.

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This is not some sort of modern art. The guys who used to paint the trains and signs and what not just used to leave their brushes and whatnot to drip here instead of cleaning them. I think this is somewhat more interesting than most of the stuff in the Tate Modern...

With another early start beckoning in the morning I decided to get to bed early...

I haven't been on one of these in 8 years...

Unfortunately, early night plan was once again foiled by the snoring bastards. Great. Anyways, I stumped down to the bus station and hopped on the bus. Somehow I didn't fall asleep again all the way to Cradle Mountain. There I got to have an hour off the bus, which would have been much more fun if I hadn't had to keep an eye on my bags and actually been able to go for a walk...

From Cradle Mountain an entire three people hopped on the little minibus that would take us out to Queenstown on the West Coast. It was a beautiful drive, entering the temperate rainforest that blankets a large part of Tasmania's west and is part of the reason that most of it is protected under the Tasmanian Wildnerness World Heritage Site. Did you know, the Tasmanian Wilderness ticks 7 of the 10 criteria to be named a World Heritage Site? There's not many that hit that many and only 35 from over 1000 sites that qualify under both natural and cultural criteria. The Tasmanian Wilderness is special.

I digress. At Queenstown we all trooped off the bus. Our driver pointed me and the sole remaining passenger in the direction of toilets and cafe and assured us he'd be back in a bit with the bus for Strahan. Only at this point did either of us realise that the bus to Strahan was the local school bus. Hm.

After whiling away our little break with cake and chat in the cafe, we hopped back on the bus with a warning from Terence the driver that the kids could be a bit rowdy. I haven't been on a school bus in more than 8 years, but I was pretty sure I knew what to expect.

As it was, the kids were pretty well behaved and the little ones at the front were fascinated by the presence of English and French girls on their bus. I'm not good with kids. I did a lot of smiling and nodding and "oh, really?" It seemed to work.

After depositing all the kids around the town at Strahan and my fellow backpacker at the YHA, I had a chat with Terence while he drove me to my destination. Nice chap. Even carried my bags to the door which was sweet and entirely unnecessary.

Yeah... I treated myself to another night in a hotel. This time it was because the YHA was fully booked for the night and what with the funny bus timetables, I rather had to arrive in Strahan that day or spend more time back in Launceston and less time in the West. Still, I'd booked the cheapest room the hotel had going and given the lack of sleep I'd been getting in Launnie I was looking forward to having space.

Bliss like having an exceptionally long shower, filching ALL the free toiletries and then spending the evening watching Tomb Raider. Because why not?

What day is it?

The following morning I waited until I absolutely had to check out and then tramped off in search of the YHA. I had a vague idea where it was, having seen where the French girl had been dropped off the previous day, but somehow I managed to get totally confused and had to summon up the courage to ask for directions. Turns out I just hadn't walked far enough down the road. It was literally just across the road from where I'd given up looking. Duh.

Strahan being on Tasmania's notoriously wet West Coast, I decided to make the most of the short breaks in the rain. First stop, post office to offload those postcards I'd been carrying around all week. There was a dog on the counter, so of course I had to make friends. Friendly chaps in the post office too. Then via the information office for ideas of trips. Lots of leaflets were acquired and I decided I'd go on one of the wilderness cruises and maybe on the railway, since there's some really interesting engineering history around that.

So I booked my day cruise and then set off in search of the train station to see about booking that. The views over the harbour were pretty nice, despite the weather.

Unfortunately, I'd completely muddled up what day it was and the rail trip I had planned on taking would only be running on the day I'd booked the cruise. Clever me. Oh well. I saw the station at least...

Instead I tramped back to the very small town centre and went to Banjos for lunch, once again indulging my love of the Tasmanian pie chain. With the weather not looking set to improve, I spent the rest of the day in the hostel, trying very hard to be social, which was a partial success until it got a bit busier later in the evening and I promptly ran away.

CHEESE

After that day of laziness, Friday in Strahan was far more adventure packed. Cruise time! A nice leisurely sail around Macquarie Harbour and up the Gordon River, in fact.

First stop, the aptly named Hell's Gates. This is the narrow entrance into Macquarie Harbour and was so named by the convicts who were sent to the Sarah Island Penal Settlement within the Harbour. Technically, the entrance to the harbour is quite wide, but more than half of it is far too shallow and riddled with sand banks for any ship to navigate. Instead they have to pass between Entrance Island and the mainland. And just getting that far must have been hard enough. The seas are notorious down the West Coast. I was told later that there are wave height buoys just offshore and one recently broke from its anchor. The cord used to attach it should have been good up to 20m. Just to give you an idea of the swells around here...

Back through into the Harbour, our next stop was a quick look at the fish farms. Tasmanian produces a lot of salmon and I think most of it is from places like this.

And so on to the infamous Sarah Island, considered hell on earth and perhaps the worst of Australia's convict establishments. Most of those sent to Sarah Island had already been transported to another penal colony, subsequently re-offended and been, effectively, banished here.

In the first few years of its existence, the commandant dealt out thousands of lashes for seemingly minor offences, conditions were said to be hellish and escape attempts common. We were led around the island by Chris from the Round Earth Theatre Company and he had some interesting additions to make to the conventional narrative.

Plus, he was easily the most engaging guide I've had in months. Anyway, common knowledge would have you believe that Sarah Island really was hell on earth and for those first few years, it probably was. But then something changed. A new commandant arrived, prisoner behaviour improved, far fewer punishments were doled out and the shipbuilding, which used the convicts as forced labour, thrived.

Still, that didn't stop one final escape on the last boat built by the convicts, but more on that in the next post.

Thoroughly entertained and planning on reading up on Tasmania's convict history, I re-boarded the boat for a gentle trip down the Gordon River, through beautiful temperate forests, largely untouched by people.

Oh, and lunch, during which I ate far too much cheese, potato and bread because if there's food included I will make the most of it.

After lunch, we moored at Heritage Landing and took a short walk through the forest, admiring centuries-old Huon Pines.

That was our last stop for the day, so off we went back to slightly damp Strahan where I promptly booked onto another boat trip for that evening.

After a brief return to the hostel where I managed to be somewhat more sociable courtesy of discovering a shared love of Minecraft, I hopped back on another, rather smaller boat, this time to head out to Bonnet Island in search of Little Penguins.

My notes remind me that our guide was called Errol and that he had to stress he was no relation to famous Tassie Errol Flynn...

Anyway, off we went back out to Hell's Gates, which felt a lot more powerful in a little motor boat instead of the big catamaran I'd been out on earlier in the day.

Then I got fed again, with delicious Ashgrove Farm cheese and biscuits and other yummy things, before we climbed onto tiny Bonnet Island to await the penguins.

Armed with red-light torches so as not to scare or hurt the penguins, we crept quietly along the short path, peering under bushes and down the steep slope to the harbour.

In the end, we spotted about half a dozen of the little things, but it being night and not being able to use flash for fear of hurting their sensitive eyes, this is the best photo I got.

I know there's a penguin there and I can see the feet and a vague outline of the body. Not sure if anyone else can...

When I finally got back to the hostel at gone 11pm, I mostly just wanted to fall into bed and go to sleep. That plan was thwarted first by a couple of noisy Swiss guys and then, again at some point in the night when the French guys from the other end of the room suddenly kicked off and starting swearing at the Swiss guys. I honestly thought I was going to have to break up a fight.

Turns out on of the drunk Swiss guys had pissed on one of the French guys' stuff. Disgusting bastard. Still, I'd have appreciated getting a full night's sleep...

Next week I'm heading back to Hobart to finish up my three weeks in Tassie. Maybe it'll be the Huon Valley, a part of Tassie I've never seen. We'll see.

And if I can spot some more wildlife, all the better...

Chile: From End to End

Oh, would you look at that? That's two ridiculously delayed blog posts sorted already today. Shock horror. Glee aside, here's how my time in Patagonia ended and how I ended up right at the other end of the country.

Spanish win

It being Saturday morning and my time in Punta Arenas down to an entire, ooh, 2 and a bit days, I scrapped my very vague plans to go to Puerto Williams. Instead, I tramped into town and booked a day trip to Tierra del Fuego for the following day. And I did it all in Spanish. Go me. I'm not convinced the clerk was convinced I understood all his instructions, especially since he mimed eating when telling me that food wasn't included...

Bless.

I then figured I'd have another go at getting to the Museo Nao Victoria, which if you've read THIS POST, you'll know I rather failed at earlier in the week. Still, the sun was shining, it wasn't too windy and I was feeling sort of energetic.

Along the way I stopped in at the cemetery. Yes, a cemetery. I've never been in one quite like this.

It was fascinating to just stroll around admiring the architecture and also the variety of names.

Punta Arenas is a city of immigrants - folks came from Chile, Croatia and even the UK to settle here - and as a result, there's a right old mish-mash of surnames. I also found this beautiful vault which struck me as distinctly Arabic in design.

Also, a chap with the excellent name Omar Davison. Clearly the people of Punta Arenas knew how to integrate.

After my peaceful stroll around the cemetery, I continued on along the main road in search of the museum. All was going well. The sun continued to shine, the wind had actually dropped...

And then I put my foot in a pothole and buggered my knee up. Clever me. Still, I figured it'd get better given a few minutes, so kept on limping on.

And limping on.

And limping on. At which point it became clear that my knee was in a really foul mood with me and limping all the way to the museum was probably not a good idea. I had, however, made it as far as the Zona Franca, which is effectively an enormous duty free area. I need some new memory cards for my camera, so I thought I'd have a poke around.

Yeah. Even duty free, they're not as cheap as I'd have liked. Memory cards can wait. So I limped all the way back to the hostel, where I wrote away the rest of the day and traumatised myself by killing off a main character's lover. Seriously, it made me cry. I blame the cemetery - clearly it made me morbid.

PENGUINS!

My final full day in Punta Arenas began far too early for my liking, although by far too early, I mean something like 6:30am...

After a bit of a detour with the minibus because they'd forgotten to pick some people up, we boarded the ferry to make the 2 hour crossing to Porvenir on the island of Tierra del Fuego.

The Brian Jacques book Castaways of the Flying Dutchman includes a section in its opening pages set on Tierra del Fuego. I read that book when I was about 12. The setting stuck with me and I've wanted to see it ever since.

I was not disappointed. On arrival in Porvenir we first visited the little museum, which included among all the fascinating arrowheads and pottery, a naturally mummified body.

And a badly articulated elephant seal skeleton.

Oh, and I mustn't forget that this is where I saw my first penguins of the day...

We also had a brief stop to see some sculptures of the now-vanished Selk'nam, the original inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego.

It's thanks to them that the island has that name. Ferdinand Magellan, on his search for a passage around South America, saw smoke coming from the island and so named it Tierra del Fuego, Land of Fire. Of course, the smoke was coming from the fires of the Selk'nam.

On a rather less cheery note, the Selk'nam were all but eradicated in a delightful act of genocide perpetrated by ranchers and other parties wanting to tap into Tierra del Fuego's abundant natural resources. Fun fact.

Moving on from that depressing comment, our next stop, nearly 2 hours along a gravel road, was the King Penguin colony at Parque Pinguino Rey.

Yup. Penguins. And not the little ones. King Penguins. Second biggest penguin species and the colony on Tierra del Fuego is the only one in (near enough) mainland South America. Very cool.

Especially since there were some juveniles in the process of moulting their baby fluff and therefore having super funky hair-does.

Harold thought I'd be better off taking photos of him instead of silly birds that can't even fly...

I also spotted what I think was a Grey Fox.

It was a fox and it was grey. Still, I suppose it could just be a colour morph of the Culpeo, another not-actually-a-fox species.

It was also blowing a gale, although thankfully not raining. I'm glad I took my fancy alpaca gloves and scarf and my funky orange hat with me though.

From there it was back on the nice warm bus and off on another hour's drive over to the north of the island where we had a short stop in an odd little town called Cerro Sombrero. It has a tiny botanical garden and a big swimming pool.

Something to do with the town being founded on petroleum - one of the first wells in Chile was here.

At this point, I started losing patience with the American group on the bus. They'd been somewhat annoying for most of the trip - nothing I could put my finger on, but they were rubbing me up the wrong way.  As I got back on the bus in Cerro Sombrero they were blithely making rude comments about the other people on the trip. Either they didn't realise I was there, didn't know I'm English or didn't care. Either way, it pissed me off. Obnoxious bastards.

Ahem. Moving on.

Onto the much shorter ferry back across to the mainland. We almost got stuck on the island, courtesy of the ferry having been cancelled for a large part of the afternoon due to the wind rushing through the Straits of Magellan. Luckily for us, they'd died down by the time we got there, although it was still not quite smooth.

Back on the mainland we made our final stops to view a couple of rusted old boats, both built in the UK if I remember rightly.

And at one of the first farms in the area, which courtesy of being declared a historic landmark (or something of that variety) still has a whole load of wool in one of the barns from when work stopped.

And so back to Punta Arenas where I stumped back into the hostel at nearly 10pm, utterly knackered and went straight to bed like the old lady I am at heart.

Oh, the luxury

Last day in Punta Arenas and I spent the whole morning writing. Or trying to in between Google Docs failing on me. Then it was time to take a taxi to the airport, which was... interesting. I felt so sorry for the driver. There he was stuck with a 20 minute drive out to the airport, so he tries to make conversation.

Only, my brain completely refused to work and I found myself having to ask him to repeat everything several times. To his credit, he persisted and we had a very broken conversation in which I'm pretty sure I told him both that I was going to Tierra del Fuego and had aleady been... Evidently I haven't been practising tenses enough.

Once I got checked in, I stuffed a completo down my face - a completo being a hotdog with all sorts of toppings on it. I'll admit, I mostly just wanted the hotdog. Strange how such a disgusting item of pretend meat can be so yummy.

Onto the plane, where my stomach, possibly due to the completo, decided to play silly buggers for the entire 4 hour flight. By the time I got to Santiago I felt grotty as anything as I lugged my rucksack through to the exit, somehow got an official taxi and so arrived at my accommodation for the evening.

Said accommodation was the cheapest hotel I could find near the airport. I'd  decided I didn't want to be farting about with getting into the city and back the next day. It was only a Travelodge type thing, but hey, I had the room to myself, a TV with English-speaking channels and breakfast included. Bliss.

Turbulence doesn't down planes...

After a glorious night's sleep in my lovely queen-sized bed and an enormous but healthy breakfast, I caught the free hotel shuttle back to the airport. I arrived early. I always arrive early. I figured I'd have plenty of time to grab a sandwich and a cuppa from Starbucks for lunch.

Starbucks took forever to make my iced tea (apparently they were out of black tea? WTF?), but it was at that point still nearly an hour until my flight, so I nibbled at my sandwich and sipped at my tea for a few minutes.

Then they announced boarding for my flight. So much confusion. In said confusion, I couldn't remember if they'd allow me to take my drink on the flight (not sure why they wouldn't...) so promptly downed my very cold iced tea in about 2 minutes flat.

BRAINFREEZE.

Wolfing down the sandwich was also unpleasant. This may explain why an hour or so into the flight I started feeling ill.

It does not explain the overwhelming anxiety in the half hour before we landed, during which we hit some turbulence. Not even really bad turbulence. Enough to cause a couple of those horrible stomach dropping moments, but not that bad.

I have a morbid fascination with plane crashes. Or rather, the causes of them. So my brain started a little mantra as my completely irrational anxiety got worse.

Turbulence-doesn't-down-planes-turbulence-doesn't-down-planes...

And on and on until we landed, which was somewhat bumpy. I've had worse. I have no idea where that anxiety appeared from and I really hope it doesn't pop up again.

Anyway, safely on the ground in Calama, I successfully bought myself a return transfer to San Pedro de Atacama, tourist hotspot and an hour and a half later stumped out of the air con and into the dry heat of the Atacama.

It was by now gone 5pm and I had no intention of going anywhere. I read and I wrote and I tried to decide which of the many natural wonders that surround San Pedro were absolute must-dos.

My scalp can't take another sunburn

On my first morning in San Pedro I was super productive. I booked a trio of tours through my hostel, bought groceries and acquired myself a sun hat. My scalp has been sunburnt far too many times already on this trip and given that the hat only cost me 2000 pesos, it doesn't matter too much if I lost it.

I think this was also the day I booked my stargazing trip, in which case I was definitely super productive...

My first trip was booked for that afternoon, so at 4pm I tramped up to the agency's office and then onto a minibus headed for the Valle de la Luna. First stop, this wonderful lookout where I discovered that my hat, while effective, is also prone to getting blown away by the wind which renders it rather useless.

I suppose I should be glad it was later in the day, so the sun wasn't so strong. There were some amazing views in the valley, which is in the Cordillera de Sal - the Salt Mountains. Seriously, the ground here seems to bleed salt.

There were odd rock formations dotted all over, courtesy of all the sand and wind, such as Las Tres Marias, although there are now only two Marias, because an idiot tourist knocked one over a few years back while trying to take a photo.

We also stopped off at the former Victoria Salt Mine. By this time the sun was starting to drop a bit and the light was lovely. Just a shame my photography skills aren't quite up to making the most of it. Still, I like this shot.

From there, we had a quick stop at the tiny museum, where I grabbed an empanada for tea and tried my best to read the Spanish descriptions on the shiny rocks. After that, our final stop for the day was Mirador Coyote or the Coyote's Lookout. The place had beautiful views out over the valley.

And was perfectly positioned to view the sunset. I even tried my hand at a little timelapse. Promptly remembered when I got back to the hostel that I don't have anything with which to stitch said timelapse sequence together. So here's a photo of the sunset instead.

Back at the hostel, I figured I'd have an early night. My next trip would be leaving at about 5am the next morning and I needed sleep.

This plan was destroyed by my dorm-mates. I went to bed at 9:30pm. I tried to sleep with the light on because there were other folks in the dorm. They sodded off after a while, so I turned the light off and started nodding off. And then they came back and turned it on again.

Which went on until after midnight. They were also noisy and I'm still amazed I didn't say anything. I got to sleep eventually, but the thought of waking up at 4am was even less pleasant than it had been earlier in the day.

Mm, llama

At 4am I somehow managed to drag myself out of bed. Quietly, despite my urge to make as much noise as possible as vengeance for the previous evening.

I regretted being polite when I first found that someone had unplugged my battery pack, so I had no back up power if my camera died. And then, once I'd tramped out to the kitchen in search of tea, realised that I was wearing the wrong shoes.

And not just a wrong pair of my shoes. Someone else's walking boots. Some bastard had moved my boots, which I'd carefully placed at the bottom of the bunk bed ladder so my feet would go straight into them. So I had to fumble about in the dark dorm (still bizarrely trying to be nice) in search of my boots.

By this point, I was in a foul mood. A really foul mood.

Fortunately for me, while I was waiting in the cold for my minibus, I was surrounded by a group of stray dogs. Anywhere else, this would have freaked me out, but I've found that in Peru and Chile the stray/feral dogs are very friendly because the locals seem to look after them. These guys were quite happy just to sit next to me and demand the occasional ear rub.

I fell asleep pretty much as soon as I got on the minibus, which meant I was rather more with it by the time we arrived at El Tatio geyser field, nearly 2 hours from San Pedro.

El Tatio is the third largest and possibly the highest geyser field in the world, with around 80 active geysers. Due to the altitude of over 4,000m (and resulting lower pressure) the geysers here don't tend to have the dramatic fountains that you get at, say, Old Faithful and Strokkur. Mostly they just bubble away merrily and steam a lot, especially in the early morning when the air temperature is low.

Here's a bubbling pool.

And here's the river which flows from the site, steaming in the morning.

Some of the group went for a dip in the bathing pool, but while the hot water was appealing, the thought of getting out into the cold air afterwards wasn't, so I gave it a miss. I stuffed my face with the included breakfast instead and admired the view of the mountains.

With the sun now up, the temperature had started improving. I'm glad I'd taken my alpaca scarf - the lovely but thin one I brought from home wouldn't have kept the cold out.

From El Tatio, we began to make our way back down the mountains to San Pedro. We made a few more stops on the way including Vado Putana, a small lake area with all sorts of birds. Not sure what any of them were... This pair with chicks looked a bit like a large coot.

Also a lagoon where I got my first good look at flamingoes. I'd seen them elsewhere in both Chile and Peru, but only from a distance so it was great to get a closer look.

We also made a stop at the little village of Machuca, where I tried llama. It was delicious.

And finally, a stop at a viewpoint which took in the volcanoes, salt pans and desert that make up the landscape around San Pedro. Seriously, the land is out to get you here.

After that glorious morning, I had a very lazy afternoon, during which I think I might have had a snooze.

But it's not cloudy...

Friday started not quite as early - only 7am. Again, I made friends with some of the local dogs while waiting for the bus. At least this time my annoying dorm-mates had gone and I was able to get a good night's sleep.

First stop today was at the Salar de Atacama to see both the salt flat and the flamingoes that live and breed in the lagoons.

I love flamingoes. They're both ridiculous and strangely elegant.

Quick breakfast and then onwards to our next stop. Somewhere along the way I fell asleep, but I woke up when we hit the gravel road. I established over the course of these trips that driving on the wrong side of the road for extended periods seems to be perfectly acceptable if you're trying to avoid potholes. And there were lots of potholes.

On the way up the mountain we came across some vicuna not far from the road. As with the flamingoes, I'd seen these guys at a distance a few times, but this was the closest view I'd got.

Cool animals - alpaca are the domesticated form. They're one of the two wild camelids found in South America, the other being the guanaco from which the llama is derived. Vicuna have such fine fur it's almost like hair and it's been considered a luxury for centuries - within the Inca Empire, only royals were allowed to wear vicuna wool. This might have as much to do with the fact that vicuna don't domesticate well. In order to get the wool you have to catch them and you can only do that every three years and the yields aren't very high.

A few minutes past the vicuna, we finally arrived at our destination - the Lagunas Miscanti i Miniques, named at most of the tour agencies as Lagunas Altiplanicas, because they are lakes on the Altiplano, obviously.

Miscanti and Miniques are also the names of the volcanoes (dormant or extinct, I think...) that overlook the lakes. And they have flamingoes and vicunas up here too.

Harold had to pop out to say hi for a minute.

The lakes are at fairly high altitude - something in the region of 4,000m - and our guide said that normally he has at least one person on each trip who struggles with it. Personally, I didn't even get the out of breath feeling I'd had in Peru, but we weren't doing anything too strenuous.

From the lakes, it was a simple case of heading back to San Pedro. I spotted a guanaco on the way, but we didn't stop so I couldn't grab a photo. Shame, because it's the only guanaco I've seen so far - they look like vicuna but with a black face.

Our last stop was at Socaire, the last village on the Chilean side of the pass which goes into Argentina. Pablo, our guide, was clearly very passionate about indigenous culture and had a little bit of a (good-natured) rant about how the Spanish destroyed the local culture and how the Atacamenos are now rebuilding it. I was intrigued to find that the recently extinct native language, Kunza, was probably an isolate - that is, it doesn't have any relation to any other language.

I found Socaire interesting because there are the remains of agricultural terracing in the village, just like the terraces found in the Peruvian Andes and associated there with the Inca culture. Here, our guide attributed them to the Tiwanaku, a somewhat mysterious culture which predates the Inca (see the site called Tiwanaku). Some theories suggest that the Inca were in some way descendent from the Tiwanaku culture, since Inca mythology has the first Inca, Manco Capac and his sister-wife, rise from the waters of Titicaca, an area around which the Tiwanaku were dominant.

Anyway, I digress. These things fascinate me.

From Socaire, we headed straight back to San Pedro, where I first made a trip to the stargazing company to reconfirm my booking for the evening. I was told to come back at 8:30pm as they didn't know whether it would be going ahead yet. Strange, I thought, given that there were only a few clouds hanging around.

Then I took myself out for lunch because I was getting bored of pasta. I ended up having a delicious quinoa and quince starter and an enormous Spanish omelette.

This might go part of the way towards explaining why I then spent the afternoon sat on my bed feeling awful. I don't think my stomach appreciated that huge serving.

At 8pm I dragged my miserable, grotty-feeling self into town to get the update on my stargazing. Only to be told that it had been cancelled.

Great.

So I rebooked for Saturday night, hauled myself back to the hostel and went to bed. Ugh.


An eventful week! Finally, after spending nearly 3 weeks in Chile and apparently not doing a whole lot. Oh, and guess what? I've written nearly 100,000 words so far this month. Go me.

Next week, I've got a few more days in San Pedro during which I'll hopefully go stargazing and then I'm heading back to Santiago to catch a flight to Australia. Via Argentina. And New Zealand.

Jet lag awaits! Any tips for dealing with it?