After the Navimag Ferry dropped us in Puerto Montt, we spent a few days making our way up the coast to Algarrobo, Chile. Algarrobo is home to San Alfonso del Mar which boasts the largest swimming pool (outdoor) in the world.
Tag Archives: chile
New Photos – Navimag Ferry
To save a bit on driving time and gas consumption and to take advantage of a unique opportunity to check out the beauty of the Chilean fjords, we decided to take the Navimag Ferry from Puerto Natales more than 2,000 kilometers north to the town of Puerto Montt. The ferry is basically a commercial operation transporting commercial goods such as produce and livestock from the isolated southern coast of Chile to Puerto Montt, where the main highway begins and runs all the way north to Santiago and beyond.
New Photos – Torres del Paine
One of the highlights of Chilean Patagonia is definitely the mountains and peaks in Torres del Paine National Park. We planned to catch the Navimag ferry from Puerto Natales, Chile in a few days and it was a convenient location because the national park was only an hour dive outside of Natales. Torres del Paine is notorious for bad weather and since we were there during the end of winter, we did not know quite what to expect.
Reaching New Heights
Headache, insomnia, breathlessness, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, rapid heartbeat, loss of appetite and in more serious cases, lack of coordination, confusion, difficulty breathing and coughing up frothy, bloody phlegm. These are all the signs and symptoms of altitude sickness.
Photo of the Week- Chaiten
Nothing could be stranger than seeing cars, houses, playgrounds and an entire town buried under several feet of volcanic mud after the erruption of Volcano Chaiten in Chile.
Farewell Mi Amigo
As with most good things in life, they all seem to come to and end sooner or later. For the World by Road, one of those good things was having Fernando Bischof (aka Nandor, aka F-Dude) as part of the crew. Unfortunately, Fernando’s stay with us on the expedition has come to and end and it was time to say goodbye. It was tough to see Fernando go because he has been with us longer than any previous crew member on the expedition, over three months, and we all got to become pretty good friends.
Sucking Her Dry
I am sure everyone has been in the situation where you think you are going to run out of gas or better yet, have actually run out of gas at some point in your life. Whether it is running out of gas while idling in gridlock traffic or realizing that you have gone past the point of no return on stretch of road where the distance between gas stations is a lot further than you thought, it is an unsettling, frustrating yet all to familiar feeling that comes with driving. Even more so than any other scenario, going on a road trip always seems to attract at least the potential for running the tank dry at some stage in the journey.
Santiago: I hardly knew ye!
The trucks are fixed and, many thanks to PatoPower, we are well geared for the upcoming road conditions of the Atacama, Bolivian salt flats, and the Pantanal wetlands but due to our friends on strike at customs, we left Santiago about 4 days behind schedule. Chile and more specifically Santiago was a wonderful place to spend a few extra days, despite how the government employees might feel.
Public Servants Strike Again… Literally
The list of quotes related to patience is just about as long as the situations in life you will undoubtedly encounter that require it. Problems are inevitable in life and having the patience to deal with problems as they arise will undoubtedly make your life easier. I knew that there would be a lot of situations that would require a lot of patience on this expedition, and I like to think that over the course of the last two years, I have become a much more patient individual. Just about every day on the expedition, something will come up that requires some degree of patience. Whether it is trying to communicate with someone in a foreign language about the simplest of things, or waiting for political issues in the country you are in at the time to run their course, having the ability to be patient can get you through a frustrating situation without doing any physical or emotional harm to yourself or anyone around you.
It was the best of times, it was the most random of times…
This is to transcribe, as best as memory serves, the events that took place between Friday October 24, 2008 and Monday October 27, 2008 aboard the NaviMag local. What occurred on Monday could not have been what any of the 90 passengers had in mind upon boarding on Friday-that is unless anyone was expecting to disembark 12 hours early via tugboat, 500 yards from the port while sporting damp life jackets under their backpacks. What exactly went wrong, no one can ever really know for sure. What we do know is that on the night of Friday October 24, those 90 passengers, albeit mostly eager coeds, boarded the NaviMag excited to spend the following 3 nights and 4 solid days gawking the beauty of the southern Chilean fjords.