Standing on top of the world (oh well...)

(Very happy and almost on top of the world - Vulcano Villarrica)

(The nice fishermen`s houses in Castro, Chiloe)

Again I`m writing while being filled with great experiences, stories and at the moment beer as well (so if the story gets too confusing...). The last mail was from the island of Chiloe. But my adventure on this island wasn´t finished at that time, because I went to the small fisherman`s village of Quicavi (yes Georg and Irme, I made it!). There was no campingsite there, so the local grocer said I could camp next to the church, in the middle of the village! This was funny of course, every villager who passed greated, some pigs, chicken and dogs were walking around. This place was so nice, it was an ancient fisherman`s village in a rural surroundings, and still quite untouched by tourism.
(If you look carefully, you`ll see my little green tent in front of the big wooden church!).

After that, I took the bus and boat, following the Carretera Austral south. This road is some prestige project from Pinochet to connect the Lake District with northern Chile. But for travellers, it is a great road through evergreen forest and small villages. I only went a small piece, to the Nat.Park Hornopiren. This park is situated around a vulcano, which gives a special view. But the weather was very wet and I still was a bit ill. Fortunately, I had the luck to rent a "cabana" (wooden hut) for only half of the normal price, complete with fireplace and TV. So I could recover completely from my cold and do some nice hiking. In the pub of this resort, the owner asked if I wanted to chat with an American guest who didn`t speak Spanish (so he didn`t have any contact with the owner and we were the only visitors). He appeared to speak Spanish quite well, but he was hiding it, because he (Chris) was a journalist for the Lonely Planet guide! But still we had a nice chat. I hope that Chris writes down some of my experiences that I told him, because the LP is uncomplete in Chile, and also is very focussed on fun and outdoor holidays (so for visiting some natural or cultural sites, it`s not sufficient)...


On the boat back from Chiloe, and later from Hornopiren, you have free and non-touristic animal tours: first I saw swimming seelions and a dolphin and later, we saw a lot of see lions, laying on rocks and gliding into the water!


Then, because Puerto Montt really is the connection between north and south Chile, I had to go back again to this not interesting city. Fortunately, this time it didn`t rain and I found a quite good hostel. But my next target was Pucon. This is in a hilly area, but there`s one mountain: the active vulcano Villarrica, 2800m! And you can climb this steep piece of rock, lava and snow if you want. And I wanted this very much (I had to, because my sister had been on top of it already...) so I signed in at an outdoor activity center (you are not allowed to climb the vulcano on your own, unless you can show that you have a lot of mountaineering experience). this was well organised, with a small group of nice people and some explaining about how to use your ice axe, crampons and mountain shoes, and with a lot of equipment. But after all that I heard and saw, the climb itself wasn`t even that heavy. Fortunately, so that we could enjoy the magnificent view very well. The vulcano is the only really high point in the area, with great views to other vulcanoes in Chile and Argentina, and we had a really blue sky! On top, you were breathing sulfatic smoke, which wasn´t that nice, but it showed that you were really on an active vulcano. And the way back was gliding in the snow on your raincoat and trousers, which went quite quick, but wasn´t really dangerous (although some people got hurt by their own ice axe or by sliding group members...). This was a weird experience and very funny.
(Vulcano Villarrica from Pucon at dawn; climbing up; me on top!; sliding down a vulcano really is a weird experience)

The night before the climbing, I heard some trombone and went into a music school and talked a bit with the people. The following night, two of these people were playing in our hostel (trumpet and piano). This was a nice coincidence. I went to them and played a bit with them, which was very nice. I had been two and a half months since I played the trumpet the last time, so it was quite hard to "keep pressure", but it was nice to play again!
(Dawn over the lake Villarrica in Pucon)

Furtheron, I wasn`t really satisfied with Pucon. OK the weather was great (I could swim in the lake, which had a black beach of vulcanic sediments and had great dawns) and I met some really nice people from the Netherlands, Britain, USA, the Basque Republic (no no not from Spain!) and France, but for me, it was much too touristy and "cool-outdoor like". So I decided to head east, to the Mapuche (Indian) village of Hurarrehue. There, people produce their own products and live in their Mapuche community. This was great. I visited the museum of the Mapuche culture and ate Mapuche food (fruits of a tree, a variation of potatoe and great sauces). I talked a lot with the people there. There is a project running which is partly subsidized by the EU, to organise a sustainable way of life, agriculture and forestry (see http://www.araucaniatierraviva.cl ).
Because the camping municipal was closed, somebody said I could camp at here friend`s place, some 3 km out of town. So I walked down there and met the very nice Raquel and Ivan. I could camp on their property and at night, we had a great talk about the Mapuches and of course about Dutch football.
(A Mapuche lunch)

And now I´m heading for the National Park Laguna del Laya. This is quite near Concepcion and the Chilean version of L.A.. I`m now in Los Angeles, which is just a normal city (200.000 people, loads of neon light, cars, ugly buildings, a horrible hostel etc.), so I`ll go on to the park first thing tomorrow, to enjoy nature again!

I hope to write more soon. I have to head up north and start going back into Argentina now (after visiting some last spots in Chile), because my plane leaves for Amsterdam at the 18th of April - time`s really flying and there`s still a lot to see!

Bye! Jeroen

Now complete with pics...

Well the last story has been completed with some pictures from Chiloe! See: http://jeroenoorschot.blogspot.com/2006/03/sea-kayaking-and-small-world-of.html

Greetings from a rainy Puerto Montt again...

Bye, Jeroen

Sea kayaking and the small world of foresters...

Now with all the pictures...


Man the time flies when you are having a great time and when you`re in a natural area without internet (fortunately, I must say - it`s no punishment to live without the square screen for a while!). My last story I wrote at the 11th of March, so almost two weeks passed, in which a lot has happenend. Which follows summarized (haha I won`t bother you with complete stories). I`ll type it while sitting in the door opening of an internet cafe in Castro on the Chiloe Island, where the cold, but smelly air (fish, shipyard etc.) waves in...

El Calafate was the last place I wrote from, and after that I went into Chile. But not after having a beer and dinner with some viajeros I met before: a Dutchie who happened to be a friend of my friend Mark v.W. (and who had the most interesting stories about his survival tours with too many kilograms in his backpack), Alan from the UK whom I met while hiking around Bariloche and a Swedish guy. And that night at 4 o`clock, my bus left for Chile. So after drinking loads of wine, I got sober again while sleaping a bit in the bus station. That`s the real tramp feeling, only without a paper box.

While waiting for the second bus in Rio Gallegos (at the crossroads of the Argentinian shore, the way to Ushuaia and southern Chile), I talked with an old Chilean hippy called Luis. That was really funny, we had a good talk, also all the way in the bus to Punta Arenas. This trip took a long time, because we had to wait for hours at the customs again (that looks like former eastern Europe; waiting for hours, first at the Arg. customs and 500m later and the Chilean customs again, showing everything you carry with you, especially food, because Chile is very anxious for agricultural diseases).

There I found out that my Lonely Planet was not really well adapted to the last developments for hostelling in Chile: two times, there were hostels described who were not there anymore, which is quite ignoring when you have been on a bus the whole day. So I ended up in Carmen`s cosy family hostel which actually was a bit too expensive, but very family-like: Carmen was a grandmother who cooked every night for her grandchildren and daughter and there was a puppy running around as well. But the good thing was, she organised everything for me (she got a bit angry as I organised a trip my self...), so I relaxed a bit there. P`Arenas is a nice harbour town, the connexion to Antarctica for Chile and as well the harbour for all the cruises through the Chilean lake district. It has a lot of ancien collonial buildings, which gives it European flair (of course, you`re not looking for this in S.America, but it`s part of history).

The first afternoon, I wanted to visit a forest monument nearby, so I rented a bike. But heavy rain, unbelievable strong and cold Andean wind and a closed forest office (so no map) forced me to turn around. Again a thing missing in lonely planet. But the next day, I went to go sea kayaking on the Magellaen Strait! This I read about a few times in the Op Pad (Dutch outdoor magazine) and interested me a lot and it was a great experience! Waves of about a meter and loads of wind, and apart from that, the steer broke, so I had to use my river Linge canoing experience to steer the kayak back to the shore, of course with the help of Maria from Australia who sat at the front seat. A second trip with the guide made it extra great - I sat at the front seat and had to paddle like hell because the wind was much stronger than before. I was completely covered with salt afterwards, it was great!

That day, we (Maria, the other kayaker Emily and I) visited some museum and some pubs, which was nice.
The next morning, I went on a real touristy trip to Fuerte Bulnes, which was the first colonial (fortified) settlement on the shore of the Magelhaen Strait, but 400 years after the discovery of the strait! This really surprised me, I wouldn`t think it would take so long to build some wooden cabins...


By then, it was time to leave for central Chile, the lake district (although I was very glad to having been able to visit the most south and windy part of S.America a bit longer, after leaving Ushuaia so quick before). I flew to Puerto Montt (unfortunately, the weather was not good, so I didn`t see anything of the Andean glaciers and the Lake District), which is the saddest, poorest and ugliest town I've seen so far. I ended up in a dirty hostel with an uninterested owner and there were very many beggars on the streets, unmaintained houses, a lot of dogs and dirt etc. This made me sad (the heavy rain as well... - well people said that Chile was doing better economically than Argentina at the moment, that might be, but it starts developing from a lower level, I think, because up till now, it`s really much poorer (except the few rich houses and cars) and more simple than Argentina!) so I moved quickly to the nice Island of Chiloe.

Chiloe is a peasant and fishermans island with a lot of native Indian inhabitants, which gives it a very special atmosphere. There, after spending the night in a more luxurious hostel, I felt a bit ill, but I still went to camp in the national park. This was not such a good idea, because the weather changed, so I got a bit more ill, especially in the morning, after waking up in a complete wet tent (it really is not suitable for humid weather...). But fortunally, Lily, the camping guard, a woman of about fifty, offered me a bed in her little house, including the greatest meals, coffee, liquor etc.

She needed some company and I liked this very much as well, we had nice chats in Spanish (more or less...)!
I did some day hiking in the gorgeous park (the climate is here so nice that the fuchsia`s grow meters high and there are small birds who fly vertically and drink the nectar!) and I went to the beach of the pacific ocean! My first meeting with this big lake!!!

But the greatest part in this paradise came yesterday. In the morning I did some horse back riding with Nelson, an Indian man who told a lot about live on the island, which was very interesting.

Then, I wanted to leave for another place but... at once I was invited (living in Lily`s house for two days already) by the French practical trainee Alexandrine to join her and a Conaf (Chile`s forestry service) park guard to visit a farmer. We drove along a most gorgeous coast for kilometers and walked around a bit. At night, some friends of Lily`s and Alexandrine`s came and... there you see that the foresters world really is a small one: I met Franco who works for another forest and rural development project (Bosque Modelo) and... who knows my good friend Mark v.B. from his practical training in 1998! Apart from that, another mystery guest appeared: a friend of Alexandrine named Virginie came, who studies at the forest university ENGREF in Nancy (France) and... who knows friends of me from my Freiburg time (Jean-Marc, Julien)!!! This was unbelievable, we had a great night with some music, much wine and very good French food!


And there I sit in Castro, the "capital" of Chiloe again, typing my stories which I hope you are still enjoying. You see, it`s great to travel alnoe: you meet new friends who are young or older people, new friends who actually are old friends (of other friends) and old friends from travelling. This is amazing! I`ve got about one month to go and I know it will be very nice to return home again, to see everybody, play my trumpet who might miss me, laying apart in pieces so it doesn´t rot, and look for a job, but I surely will miss this!

Greetings from Chile!

Jeroen

Back to: http://jeroenoorschot.blogspot.com

A small motorbike story I forgot to write...

Well just for the bikers among you (dad, Timo, Hans, Gert, Jan-Kees, Tjeerd, Kees&Annemarie and...): In Ushuaia I met two Americans who had been driving all the way from Virginia to Ushuaia on a Moto Guzzi enduro 1100cc. That was quite impressive and really made me wanting to drive! Who knows...

Heavy wind, rain, snow and beautiful mountain views

Somebody might have read the short message I've posted in between, about a week ago (see http://jeroenoorschot.blogspot.com/2006/03/bosques-petrificados.html or scroll below).
This activity started with visiting the Perito Moreno glacier near El Calafate. The pictures tell it: this unbelievably huge piece of natural power was very impressive. It`s about 50m high and 14km long! If you (and the 200 other visitors) were silent, you could hear the ice working. It sounded like an exploding mine or sometimes like a shotgun (I know these violent comparisons don´t really fit to this wonderful peaceful natural thing, but I don´t know any other sound to compare...).
(The glacier Perito Moreno: At the third picture, you`ll see a white point on the water, in the middle, in front of the forest: it`s a quite big tourist cruise boat with two floors, just to imagine the size of the glacier!)

(The Gol VW 1.6 was very new and not really 4x4 or all terrain adapted...)

Then, the same day I drove to the Bosques Petrificados. On the map, you can see that El Calafate is at the western border of Argentina and these petrified forests are at the eastern coast, very far away... But a very interesting ride through the most lonesome place I`ve ever seen! Imagine there`s really nothing for about 200km! Once I picked up a Canadian hitchhiker, he was only 19 years old and on his way on his own. He was waiting for three hours in the desert, so he was very glad to get this ride. Before dawn, I couldn`t find the right track and stood alone, but fortunately, there came a trucker who sent me the right way. At 1am I finally arrived at a car parking quite near the Bosques and I slept in the car. So the next morning, ater a very tiring car tour through the desert, I visited petrified tree trunks of about 70 million years old, some of them with a diameter of 1,5m! And you could see all the wood structure very well. This was a great experience, and really worth the 1500km (of which about 750km on unpaved roads...; I just don´t know what the hiring company found about it...). Between the trip, I slept in the car, so when I came back in El Calafate, I was completely exhausted, but very satisfied. Still, not many people know about this site and there are no guided tours or public transport going, so I tell everybody about it, it`s really worth visiting.
(In the desert, these guanaco`s were the only company) (The stone trunks!)

After resting a bit (I even bought a book about the history of Patagonia, which makes travelling around even more interesting!), I organised my next trip. Because El Calafate is next to the Andes, it was worth going to one of the most famous Andean hiking regions, near El Chalten. In this backpackers and mountaineers paradise, everything was twice as expensive (but great artesanal beer), there`s no ATM, there are just mountains... and very strong wind, rain, even snow. But when they sometimes fail, you have such great views on snowcapped mountains, glaciers, lakes etc. and only at an elevation of about 1500-2000m. The two famous peaks Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre (both over 3000m) where hidden in clouds all the time. I hiked for two days in rain and wind, discovered that my tent really is unsuitable for this weathertype and actually, my new jacket as well (which was a disappointment) and then I took a small bus, some 40km north.
(There I am in the rain and wind of El Chalten...)
There, on a campingsite, I would meet Alejandro, who would come there to do research. And indeed, after hiking around a bit and hiding in my sleeping bag the rest of the day because it was really cold (and my tent doesn`t isolate at al...), in the evening, there was the jeep of their research team coming! We had a great evening together with a camp fire and some nice food (and Bols oude graanjenever, which is made in Argentina!). In the morning, we hiked up to a glacier to prepare Ale`s research and... there we saw Mount Fitz Roy, without any cloud. It was like a medieval castle or church on a mountain, very spectacular.
(Ale and I with the Fitz Roy mountain at the background; the research team of CRICYT Mendoza at the camping site of Lago del Desierto)
After that, it was time to head back for El Calafate and to say goodbye, but very nice to having met again! It was good to leave El Chalten though, because it had been a very hard camping and hiking experience while being underequiped.

And now I've got a wash, relax, internet and travel preparation day out here. Here we`ve got sun, good wind to dry everything, a beautiful lake and some nice Argentineans from Buenos Aires with whom I had a mate the other night. For going on the internet, the noon is a great time, because all other shops apart from internet cafes have siesta, so you can`t do anything anyway!
The funny thing about El Calafate is, that everybody goes there. Until now, I´ve met 8 people who I`ve met before on my trip in this small town. So tonight we`ll have a beer together!

I`ve changed my plans a bit now. Actually I wanted to go to another, world famous mountain area and climbers paradise Torres del Paine (just over the border in Chile), but because my tent and jacket are not so good, my leg has had plenty of backpacking excersice and because autumn really has started in the mountains (it freezes at night, rains and winds a lot so you don`t have much chance to see the gorgeous mountain peaks, like in El Chalten, because of the low clouds), it might be better for me to visit other areas. Of whom there are plenty: I will head for Punta Arenas (so I will enter Chile), visit the Magellan island and after that, I will fly to Puerto Montt and visit the Chilean Lake District, the Chiloe Island and the land around the Carretera Austral (which is the only main road through Chile, south of Puerto Montt). I`m even really interested in hiring a motorbike for that - depending on the prices, clothing, weather etc.

Let`s see what happens, first I have to organise my trip into Chile!

It`s great to hear what happens in the Netherlands (and Germany, Indonesia etc.): people bought a house, found a job, are doing well with their studies, are getting married. I really like to hear this news, so keep on mailing!

Hey could anyone tell me if Maxima and Beatrix are in Argentina now? They weren`t in El Chalten on every case...

Jeroen

(Just some pics from Tierra del Fuego: a village with wooden and iron plate houses (like Skandinavia?); the north east is much flatter than around Ushuaia, but very nice and impressive as well; Crossing the Strait of Magellan by boat (heavy waves, salty water on the camera...))

Bosques Petrificados

OK just a short message in between: I`ve made it to the petrified forest!!! It was a trip of about 1300km (see the map - the circle from El Calafate to the Bosques Petrificados) in a hired Volkswagen Gol 1.6 (no, no Golf as we know it in Europe) and with that, I drove two days, from which at least 500km on unpaved roads. So the nice white Gol turned into a yellow dusty (also inside) all terrain vehicle. At night, I slept inside, as a cat around the shift and the steering wheel, so I was quite exhausted as I came back in El Calafate yesterday. But very satisfied about seeing these 1500km of pampa, desert, the Atlantic ocean again and THE PETRIFIED FOREST. This is a must to see as a forester I think. It was very impressive! I`ll write more about it when I have the pictures with me! Tonight I`ll travel on to El Chalten to get my holiday rest (I even bought a book...), to hike around in the Andes and hopefully to meet Ale, who has to do some research work there!

Jeroen

Back to: http://jeroenoorschot.blogspot.com/2006/03/heavy-wind-rain-snow-and-beautiful.html

After snow, rain, wind and condors back in the dusty Andes again

Here`s a lot to write since I left Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic coast to visit the Welsh village Gaiman, about a week ago. It was very nice to meet Esyllt, Christian and the Welsh guests Merion and Melery again. We had some nice evenings together and Christian showed us his home area. This is a valley around the Rio Chubut, which has been cultivated by the Welsh immigrants, about 150 years ago. After a nice tour in the back of Christians pick up, we climbed up the range around the valley and you could see the effect of irrigation: the valley is green and fertile and the surrounding land is desert! We enjoyed this nice view with a mate.

As I came into Gaiman in the evening, it was raining. I didn`t want to put up my tent, because it has only one compartiment and this would mean that everything would be wet by the time the tent would stay, so I went into an ancient small bed&breakfast with an owner that was as ancient as his house. There was no hot water in the tap and it wasn`t very clean, so I decided only to stay one night. I was so hungry that I cooked a meal with my cooker in the bathroom (I know it`s not a really nice thing to do, but this was an emergency...).

The next night, I camped on the site of the Fire Department. In Puerto Piramides, I had been camping at the site of the Police Dept. already - apearently it is a way to earn some extra money for these services, or to make an extra service or to make people convenient with the state services or something. I like the idea! The funny thing at this camping site was though, that the wheat was growing one meter high. There hadn`t been much mainanance the last years, I think, so you had to search for a spot to build up the tent. In the beginning, I also was the only camper! (The Firedept`s campsite. You can see the camping`s toilets just through the wheatplants...)

In Gaiman, the whole Welsh group from the wedding in Esquel also landed again. This was a funny coincidence. I did not expect that my Argentinean holiday would have such a Welsh character.
The next morning, I could have a lift to Trelew, where my flight to Ushuaia would leave in the afternoon. Esyllt and I had a nice coffee with medialunes (croissants) together and then we said goodbye. I watched around in the city a bit and went to the airport then. Well, my plane would be leaving at 17h but there was a heavy delay because of heavy storm in Buenos Aires. So everybody waited until 19h in the waiting room and then we heared (after asking at the desk; don´t think they will tell you anything by themselves...) that the plane would leave at 3am!!! We got a voucher to go back into town by taxi and enjoy a meal in a very expensive hotel, which was a nice gesture. After that, everybody fell asleap everywhere in the lounge and the congress hall of the hotel. It looked quite helpless. Meanwhile, I had a beer with the English James, who was guiding a group of retired British and US-people through Argentina and who was quite desperate to talk with somebody a bit younger... But finally, after 9 hours of delay, the plane took off and at 5am, we landed safely in Ushuaia on Tierra del Fuego. Fortunately, it was still dark and raining heavily and I was not tired at all, so I dicided to wait and sleap a bit in the hall. There, I met the very nice English painter John, who would travel to Antarctica afterwards, to paint birds and the Antarctic ice in oil. This was a very pleasant talk while waiting (although I didn`t sleap as planned...). His paintings are to be seen at http://www.galleryofbirds.co.uk. I saw some of his paintings and they were very good! He also wrote a European bird guide.

This is the most southern city of the world (so they say; the Chilenians don`t think so) and is the take of for cruises and research on Antarctica. It is situated at the Beagle Channel, which connects both oceans. I think it has a Skandinavian atmosphere, a lot of coloured wooden and metal houses and a very rough landscape. Although the mountains where only 700m high, there were glaciers on them! I landed in a decent hostel (I start to think I rather camp than go into a hostel, because you don`t have any privacy or room in such a dorm with five other stinky travellers...) and went into town. I really love harbours, sea smell, wind, a bit of rain doesn´t matter as well. This was a GREAT city! And fortunately, they had a good and cheap parrilla (grill) restaurant again!
The next days, I hiked into the National Park Tierra del Fuego. I was warned for bad weather but actually it was ok. There I did two days of hiking. The first steps on the first morning were going wrong already. I mixed up east and west (remember that the sun goes the other way on the southern hemisphere...) but by that, I saw the greatest humid peat fields. And after that, I hiked lots of kilometers along mountains, lakes etc. I camped on a free site which was wonderfully situated and there I had to do what I promised Alejandro and his Cuban friend Candice: I smoked a Cohiba Cuban cigar on the most southern spot I would visit during my trip. I carried it along from Mendoza, in a container made out of a burning spirit bottle, and this was the time to smoke it! I had some good Mendoza wine to it, and this together with the great view, the silence, some owls flying past and the fact that it was not raining made it very special! It was very cold, so I also made a small fire to it, which completed the good outdoor feeling!

The next day, I left my tent on the site and hiked up the highest peak nearby. Even without a backpack, it was a very heavy climb (3,5h), but the view from there was really marvelous - over Ushuaia, the Beagle Channel, many purple and red peat fields and the already slightly colouring trees (autumn comes early in this extreme climated area). And I saw two nice woodpeckers, a lot of other birds and a CONDOR!!! Also it was snowing while walking, it was a great experience. As I came back on the camp site, I was exhausted. I had to pack my stuff then quickly to get the bus back to Ushuaia (to organise things - see the next chapter) and it started to rain. So Tierra del Fuego was showing it`s hard side in the last hour!

But back in Ushuaia, the "stress" started. I`ve got in my mind to visit a petrified forest, quite far away from the places I originally wanted to go. In order to do that, I have to hurry a bit and that started that evening. I booked a but, mistaked in Spanish and this resulted in the fact that my bus would leave for Rio Gallegos and El Calafate the next morning at 5.30! So after my bad flight experience and two days of hardcore hiking I had to clean my gear, went into bed at 23h and up at 4.30 again. And apart from that, I actually left the nice Tierra del Fuego a bit too early. But it was my own mistake, I have to watch out with my Spanish...
But ok, I made it into the bus on time and the trip to El Calafate after that was so nice! We drove through the T`del F. mountains, the endless fields (then they say that Holland is flat...) and then passed the Maggelan Channel by boat (heavy waves - pictures coming up next time...) and endless fields with cows again afterwards. And finally, at 1am, so after a 20h bus ride, we ended up in El Calafate, back in the Andes again. I will take a small break now, which is important for my holiday feeling but especially for my right leg, and after that, I will visit a very beautiful but touristy glacier and try to get to these ancient stone forests. By then, I will write again!

A short thing to think of in between: apart from all the nice people that I meet and all the great things that I see, I also see some less nice things. Argentina has come down after the crash in 2001, which you see with the poor builded houses on the edge of every big city and some begging children. So I`m having a good time here, but there`s a lot of poverty, which should not be forgotten! For instance, in El Calafate, I camp next to a road worker, who works here every day and his camping equipment looks really bad. And there I come with my nice gear and fancy outdoor clothes, from Europe on holiday... If I speak to Argentineans, they always ask: why did you come here, is it because our country is so cheap? A lot of travellers do I think, and behave like rich foreigners, which isn`t nice. But fortunately, when you speak with the people and exchange some opinions (and the competition in football, which will start in June in Germany with Netherlands - Argentina) you always get a smile. I don`t hesitate to travel on or to enjoy my trip, it`s just good to know this other side!

Thank you all for your nice reactions - let`s stay in contact!

Jeroen