…a spectacular crossing of the Andes from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile to Saltain the north of Argentina (which makes even a 10 hour bus ride seem short):
…a few days in the nice Salta, with our first steak in Argentina.
…a cycling tour through the vinyards of Mendoza.
…cycling and horseback riding in Bariloche, little Switzerland within Argentina.
…and, back again in Chile, the nice island of Chiloé with its wooden churches and Palafitos (houses on stilts).
By now we are in a place even further south, in Punta Arenas. Tomorrow we continue to Puerto Natales and will pay a visit to the – (we expect) quite over-hyped – national park Torres del Paine.. Let’s wait and see..
Looking back we should have stayed a little longer in San Pedro, so our program in the salt desert in the north of Chile was quite packed: in the first afternoon we went to Valle de la Luna and Valle de los Muertos:
On the second day we did another tour with Cosmo Andino to the cool highlands (4000 to 5000m): the Flamingo lagoon Chaxa in the Atacama desert, lagoon and vulcano Miñigues and the beautiful Salar de Tara (or was it Talar de Sala? Eva had a legasthenic tendency in San Pedro, probably caused by the thin air).
The third day was a bit more quiet, in the afternoon we went “floating” in the salt lagoon Cejar and for the sun-set to the very corny lagoon Tebinquiche: It seemed like pieces of ice were swimming on the turqoise water, in the background the mountain chain with vulcanos sprinkled in between and the sun made it all glow in different shades of red. Unfortunately we don’t have any photos: when the camery battery is empty, no warming in the hands or breathing hot air onto it helps.
Time is a relative thing in Tonga. Though this is not bad at all if you are mainly here for relaxing.
The first six days we stayed in a little beach house, like Robinson Crusoe but with a fridge. Snorkeling and swimming, lying in the sun, for dinner barbecued Mahi Mahi or Red Snapper. Every now and then whales swim by our lagoon. We also had a good time with the other guests Sarah and Matt from Australia, Sally and Zane from New Zealand and also the local dog Chino.
We had our own kitchen and therefore had the pleasure of going shopping here, it is quite interesting: tomatoes, cucumbers, bananas, etc. can only be bought in bulk at the market. There is only one supermarket on the island of Tongatapu, in the main town Nuku’alofa, throughout the island you would go to one of the prison-like Chinese stores, sometimes they even have beer (“PSSST!!”). The Chinese on Tonga are getting more and more, not to everyone’s liking, though. In return the Kingdom receives questionable gifts from China like ill-reputed planes and ships. And on sundays, when life in Tonga stands still and everyone goes to church, the Chinese restaurants are the only places that are open.
A highlight of a different kind was definitely the flight to ‘Eua, a small island 40km south-east of the main island Tongatapu – a comedy in three acts:
The fact that we would be crossing the pacific with a propeller aircraft already made me a little tense, but when we arrived at the domestic airport as expected at 3pm – one hour ahead of the departure – and the guy at the “Check in” muttered something that sounded like “the plane is broken”, even Alex got a little worried. On the airport there also were two other Austrians and a Frenchman who were scheduled to fly with the same plane (“Islander”) to Ha’apai already at 1pm, but the pilot apparently had refused to continue flying the plane.
So at 3:30pm it seemed given that we wouldn’t fly, by 3:45pm the lady of the highly motivated ground crew told us that 15 minutes later she could officially advise that the flight was cancelled. At 4pm to our surprise the word was that we would be flying, with another aircraft, a Queen Air. Also the (longer) flight to Ha’apai would take place, using the (previously?) broken Islander (where they just before they had extracted a large part from it?!). Whatever, we would be taken with the working plane.
Then the 7 passengers had to be weighed, including the hand luggage. Funny experience. The departure time was delayed for another hour to 6pm. At 5:15pm 5-6 people gathered in front of a computer screen and then it took them 45 minutes (at least that is what we suspect) to figure out the load balance of the plane. Maybe we shouldn’t have finished our 2 litre water bottle because they then had to redo the whole calculation. (The solution apparently was to put a passenger in the co-pilot’s seat.) At 6:10pm we finally took off. 8 minutes later we landed on ‘Eua.
The island of ‘Eua has even less infrastructure than Tongatapu – no busses or taxis, no restaurants or supermarkets, just two places who offered accomodations to tourists. Here we were very active for 2.5 days, hiked, cycled and had nice evenings with other guests at Taina’s Place.
We made our way back to Tongatapu by ferry, departure time: vague.
After all, Tonga was something really special, we had a relaxing and at the same time interesting time, met very nice people and are in retrospect very glad that we settled on this pacific island.
Six weeks ago two fellow travellers recommended to us: “When you go to the Great Ocean Road, go to Bimbi Park!” With cheap accommodation prices and the prospect to see lots of koalas, we gladly took their advice.
And it really paid off, even when our necks were aching a little from constantly looking up: Koalas, Koalas, Koalas! And most of them to our surprise quite awake and in comparison to their mates born and living in captivity almost hyper-active!
On the Great Ocean Road there are also 12 apostels (supposedly after Uluru the second-most photographed sight in Australia) and a spectacular coast.
Not so nice: in a parking lot somebody drove into the rear side of our car. We had to pay the excess to our rental company (AUD 3000) even though we didn’t do anything wrong. Now we hope for a quick processing with our insurance and hope that our rental company will send us the required documents as soon as possible.
We are currently succeeding in not thinking about the whole thing in the south pacific paradise Tonga and enjoy sun, beach and sea, watch huge butterflies fly by and whales swim by 🙂
Was what we heard from every Australian when we told them about our travel plans to Tasmania. Looking back we can only agree!
We spent our first week in Tassie working for accomodation and food on the beautiful Brockley Estate. On this huge and secluded sheep farm Julian & Chaxi are running a B&B, also offering Spanish cuisine (Chaxi is originally from Teneriffe).
The work we did was diverse: mowing the lawn, weeding, painting cupboards, cleaning windows, tidying up the garage and clearing up the remains of the old chicken shed. For us, it was also interesting to see what life is like for B&B hosts: not only romantic but also quite challenging at times. There is always something to do!
Our home for the week at Brockley was the cosy Shearer’s Quarter (the sheares that stay here for one week every year kind of leave a distinct smell) with an open fire. When we weren’t working or sleeping (nice to know why you’re actually this tired) we explored the area around the farm by foot or took the canoe, looking for the resident platypus – which however we didn’t get to see, but spotted possums and kangaroos instead.
The second week we hired a car and drove up north to Launceston and then to the east coast. The Bay of Fires was the most beautiful beach we’ve seen so far – white sand, orange granite rocks and turqoise water ?UR” even though the sky wasn’t blue but rather cloudy.
In Freycinet National Park we took a quite ambitious hike to Wineglass Bay and around Mount Marlow. Being rather exhausted by that we might rethink our plans of hiking for 3 days through Torres del Paine in South America.
After that we headed further south to Bruny Island which we explored mainly eating and tasting oysters, fudge and cheese. We also got a bit upset about the small dent we got into our bumper – well, back then we didn’t know what was to happen to our car on the Great Ocean Road…
