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| Found a good map of Argentina and Chile at the gas station. A little more detail then the map I've been using |
We travel thru the National Park of Lanin on the Argentina side, which is a washboard gravel road, guess it keeps you driving slow to check out the scenery :)
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| One of the noisy bridges we went over, seems every board on top is loose! |
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| This is the monkey puzzle tree (araucana) which they have found some to be over 1000 years old. The indigenous people use the seeds as part of their main diet |
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| You can just see Volcáno Lanin poking thru the clouds |
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| Pretty bright orange flowers between the bushes |
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| A forest fire went thru here in 2010 and burnt many acreages of the monkey puzzle tree, and since then no campfires are allowed in the parks |
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| Road to Chile border is in better shape! Not paved but dirt which is at least smooth, driving thru more monkey puzzle trees |
We arrive at the Chile border crossing and everything goes smoothly until they have to check Vanna. The custom's guy goes in to check out our fridge. We did say we have fruits and vegetable, but they took ALL the vegetables, even cabbage and potatoes!! Then they took our bacon and salami - no smoked meats allowed - WHAT??? They also took my gouda cheese because they thought it was smoked - but in this case it wasn't so I got it back YEH!! They did miss going into the freezer because I'm sure they would have taken all our meat from there to! Also they missed the jar of honey that I brought back from Greece last year - also not allowed :( But they had their chance to find it, I'm not voluntarily going to give it up!) Oh and of course my container of salad that I made just last night. Took everything over to a container that shows it will be burned later. Ya ya..... but the one custom guy did speak English and said sorry they had to take everything and gave me some reason for why the smoked meat - all was still in the package bought in Peru. We didn't have any problems coming into any country with our food until today. So they pretty well cleaned out our fridge, so made it easy for me to clean up before restocking. Guess we'll probably have the same problem when we cross back into Argentina, will have to make sure to eat everything we buy and buy only what we need!
As we start driving we wonder 'did we just get transported back to BC???' so much like BC here!
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| Chile is a beautiful country! More lakes in the Lake District then in Argentina and the roads are good |
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| Beautiful Hydrangea bushes along the highway |
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| Gas is priced about the same as BC too!! $1.40C a litre for Super95 |
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| Then we went into the tourist town of Pucón - sidewalk cafes are full on a Sunday |
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| Then found an ATM and took out 200,000CP - $350C |
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| Volcán Villarrica - looks like Mt Fuji, and yes it does have some smoke coming out of the top! |
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| Walked down to the marina and watched as this cigarette boat went out onto the open water - sounded really cool |
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| Another shot of the volcano with Pucón marine in front and lots of hotels |
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| We move to the west side of the lake to Villarrica - suppose to be less busy - but it's not! The beach is crowded! |
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| Different types of pedal boats |
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| Lake cruises |
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| Where we park for the night the beach is not that nice, but at least not busy |
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| Boats, wave runners etc |
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| The quieter country area before the cities |
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| The houses in this area are pretty NA looking |
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| And they have beautiful yards |
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| They all seem to have a fireplace for heating during the winter season |
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| High end stores like Merrill, Adidas, etc are all here since this area has lots of outdoor sports |
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| Volcáno Villarrica at dusk with a puff of smoke on top - last erupted in 2015. |
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