America del Sur

I am happy to say this is my last post. I will never make a great writer

This trip was a dream come true. Travelling for a long time and to my long time favourite. As a little child I was a big fan of Argentine football although it still hurts that they defeated us in the '86 semi-finals. Argentine football is passion, technique but also a lot of determination and the players were colourful with long hair and an edge. Quite obvious I liked Maradona, Canniggia, Redondo, Batistuta to name a few. As a teenager I also had a major crush for Gabriela Sabatini, the most beautiful tennis player ever and beautiful she still is at the age of 38.

I also had a weird feeling that it was my second home country. And after this trip I am really convinced. I like the nature, the cities, the climate, the customs, the food and the people! People and especially the girls were so good to me. They showed me around, went out and to tango lessons with me, shared mate with me, cooked me apple pie and guiso de lentejas and so much more.. These people know how to party and without drinking too much. Life is not easy in Argentina but these people don't show it. They fill the streets with style and proud. They fall also victim to this because they have to put this outside image while having little. They value family life and are hard-working. People start working at the age of 18 and are getting their university degrees at night. Working means much more hours as well than in Europe and then they are rewarded with 2-3 weeks of holiday per year.

Argentina has everything to be a leading nation but has an intruiging and often entertaining history that has set the country back several times. I am fascinated by it and i am reading now about Menemism (the nineties culture of the flamboyant Peronist leader Menem) and the 2001 crisis daily life that followed and will try to get more informed about the junta. Also the culture interests me and I hope to be a decent tango dancer one time but this has to wait a bit I guess.

I want to thank everybody I met and made the trip this nice and also everybody who stayed behind and missed me. This dream has come true but I have many more and some of them involve Argentina... I will be back. I am working on my other dreams of which some never come true but that isn't really important. I am happy as I am.

The last 15 days were a bit hectic. After Chili I went back to Buenos Aires to greet some people and realised that I didn't have much time left to get to Rio de Janeiro and that it still was a looong way (more than 2000km) ! I wasn't going to make carnaval in Rio so I looked for the next best thing or even BETTER. Gualeguaychu !!! Carnaval in Argentina! El carnaval del pais !!! Every weekend starting in January until beginning of March this little town north of Bs As is swamped with the young in-crowd partying all day and a Rio-like show on saturday evening. It was fun Just enjoy the pictures.

After the carnaval I left for Uruguay. I allways thought that I would like Uruguay a little bit better because it is smaller than Argentina but I was wrong. I like Punta del Este though which is one of the fanciest summer resorts in South America as it was nice and calm. I also liked very much the colonial heritage of Colonial del Sacramento but the capital Montevideo was really ugly. It just felt like Brussels and reminded me why I never wanted to live there and preferred staying in the village.

I had to rush to Brazil. From Montevideo to Rio de Janeiro I had 41 hours to spend in buses. Ouch! Buses weren't as comfortable as in Argentina but they were almost empty so I could have the two chairs all by myself. I had one stop in Porto Alegre for six hours. People in Brazil are more diverse from black to blond European style. For some reason I could be Brazilian too and they started talking to me everywhere: in shops, public transport even asking me for directions. Help! They talked so quick and I couldn't really understand it. They gazed at me when I tried to respond in spanish or english.

The people watching in Porto Alegre was nice but the girls are on average not as beautiful as in Argentina. Meaning I didn't ran into Adriana Lima or Alessandra Ambrosio which was disappointing. I only had 1.5 day to spend in Rio and chose for a quick as much as I can plan visiting Copacabana, Ipanema, the Christ, the center and watching a Flamengo game in the famous Maracana stadium. Unfortunately they played a small club and the stadium was only filled 1/8th. I prefer going to Boca !!!!

On the way back i had 12 hours to spend in Washington DC and i did a quick tour there as well with a visit inside the Capitol in the room of the congress but they just went into recess(ion), a walk through the Smithsonian Institute which are all free museums spending almost 2 hours in the Aircraft and Aeronautic museum and of course a little stop at the White House. All marble and government offices from where they try to rule the world... Impressive, clean but without a soul...

Chili is a beautiful country. Although it seems as a small strip on the map next to its neighbour Argentina, it is still a very big country. In diversity of nature it can match its big rival as the scenery changes much more quickly. The dirt road carretera austral in the south is even more interesting than the hyped ruta 40 of Argentina.. And then you have the volcanos of course. One destroyed the village of Chaiten and erupted again a week after I climbed anoher one about 300km more north in the same chain. It was a special hike. Getting up at 4 am and starting a hike at 5 am in darkness helped by full moon. The last 2 hours until noon we had to cross a glaciar until we managed to get the (ugly) smell of the hume it was producing. Besides the impressive crater you could also see oher cones more than 100km away.

On top of this beautiful scenery, you will find the best seafood and fish in Chili in places like the Island of Chiloe, Valdivia and Valparaiso. Santiago is a smaller version of Buenos Aires. A little bit cleaner but also more modern residencial skyscapers. With the Torres del paine and San Pedro de Atacama of which I already talked, i can honestly say that Chili is a top tourist destination but it lacks something.

Yes ! Pepper ! Ambiance ! The people lack the grace, sympathy and joy of life of their big neighbours. In fact, they are a bit dull and at times not always friendly either. They tend to drink a bit more but it doesn't make them more pleasant but rather disgraceful. It seemed in some ways a poorer country than Argentina because of the way they behave and dress but make no mistake it is a richer country. You can see this for instance in the street with their newer cars, often big 4x4s. For the tourist however Chili is more value for money because of the recent depreciation of the chilean peso than Argentina.

The last two weeks I did only but camping and walking. They told me that Patagonia was an ideal place for these activities. Actually it is one of the easiest places to do this. Trekking for "whimps". It is too easy to be honest. The water is drinkable and tastes great. There are no big animals like black bears or grizzlies, no snakes no nothing. So what about all the fuzz about trekking in Patagonia in places like El Chalten and Torres del Paine. I dindn't get it.

But now I do. It is the weather. Jezus Christ! The weather changes every minute. Pouring rain. Sunshine. Horrible winds. You name it. There hasn`t been one night where I slept decent due to the heavy winds and rain.

But nothing compares to my second day in the Torres del Paine. I woke up really early to get a view of the Torres at anrise. The path was difficult but doable. I did see the Torres albeit in the mist while a lot of people don`t get to see them. So this was going to be my lucky day. So it felt. I went down to the valley to make a connection to a new Valley to climb. The rivers however where higher than the day before and after an hour I came to a destroyed bridge but managed to get through the water. The cold and wet feet didn`t bother me. After all this was adventure right?

After crossing about 5 more rivers hips deep, I came to a river which wasn`t really deeper than the others but so violent that it was just foolish to try. I tried of course but had to give up. In fact nobody passed that day. Bad luck and I had to walk back 3 hours to get to the base camp at the entrance. I would go to the other side of the park by taking a boat the next day. On the way back, the wind picked up. It literally picked me up and smacked me violently with my 17 kilos of bagage against the ground. I stood up and tried to look for shelter but I was just in open fields of gravel and stones. My body got sandblasted and punished in a medieval way by the stones and gravel. My arms were all covered in blood and all I could do was sit down on my knees, protect my face and screaming for the storm to stop. Quite a nice picture when you look back on it. After 20 minutes I found shelter in a grass zone and could clean my wounds. I doubted to leave the park but decided that I wasn't going to be a whimp.

So I put my tent on the camping at the entrance after the last bus left. However, the wind decided that I didn't had enough so while setting my tent up, it took control of things and ripped my tent apart where it should be in the ground. Fucking hell!!! I spent about 30 minutes on the toilet of the camping to repare my tent (sewing). Just before dawn, I managed to set my tent up with the necessary reinforcements for another bumpy night. This time stones were my friends.

At the end of the 4 days in the Torres due to the detour I had walked 110 km and about 8-9 hours per day. Feeling truly happy leaving the park while singing "I don`t wanna come back down from this cloud..."

The last couple of years my sister is the one who knows most about me. When I am in doubt about something or have mind troubles I turn to her although she is the youngest of us all. Strange because as kids we didn't had that many contact as we had different hobbies and interests. She and my brother-in-law also introduced me in their circle of friends which we share now.

In Argentina I also have two soulsisters. Actually I am writing this piece in honour of them because I forgot to mention them in the former. Mara and Pau are in a similar stage in life as me and we could talk about important topics of life and share common grounds. These two girls are the ideal girlfriends and they are really ready to make some guys truly happy. I hope it will materialize soon for them and that everything falls into place. Meanwhile interested guys have to be ready to move to Argentina as these girls are not willing to leave their roots easily. I managed to get a promise though of Pau, the first week we met, that if nothing improved in her situation that at the age of 38 she would come to Belgium to be introduced to the Belgian guys :-)