Part Six of the tale of an Overland Journey through Chile It’s all Lewis Carroll’s fault. Other people watching flamingoes marvel at the bird’s grace. They remark upon the fabulous plumage; they see elegance and beauty. But I see croquet mallets.
Part Five of the tale of an Overland Journey through Chile Orange mountains; a clear blue sky; and pinned to the blue sky, ahead of the mountains, two colourful hot-air balloons. This was the sight which greeted me when I peeped my head out of our roof-top tent after our night on the salt-pan.
Part Four of the tale of an Overland Journey through Chile “Anyone going higher than 3,000m needs to be aware of the risks of altitude sickness.” So reads the health section in our old and very ‘pre-loved’ edition of the Rough Guide to Chile. The author goes on to explain how the reduced atmospheric pressure at high altitude leads to a corresponding reduction in oxygen. “Don’t be tempted to whizz straight up to the altiplano from sea level,” he explains…
Part Three of the tale of an Overland Journey through Chile Although we had zipped up the door in order to stay warm, the next morning when we awoke there was no condensation on the nylon walls of our roof-top tent. So arid is the air flowing over the Atacama Desert that the damp breath from four bodies was easily absorbed. We wriggled into our clothes, squirmed our way out of the door, and dropped down the ladder, one by…
Part Two of the tale of an Overland Journey through Chile Chile is a crazy country. Just look at the shape of it! If Britain is roughly triangular and France is a hexagon, Chile is a long thin squiggly thing. It clings to the western edge of the Andes, and sometimes it even tumbles into the sea, so that much of the lower half of the squiggle is only accessible by boat. Chile occupies an area no greater than France…
One of the fundamental ideas behind our cruising lifestyle is that it’s environmentally sustainable – which is why, when Nick first mooted the idea of travelling overland in a campervan I was in two minds. On the one hand, having spent so many years hugging the coastline of this great continent of South America I was very eager to take a look at what goes on inland; but at the same time, I don’t like to do anything which pollutes…
People have been asking, “What’s happened?” It turns out that it’s been nine weeks since we posted anything new on the website and even longer since we said what-ho on our facebook page. Have we given up cruising? Have we swallowed the anchor and bought a small-holding in Portugal? The answer is, no; not yet. The answer is that a lot has been happening – so much that we haven’t had time to write about it.
The next stage in Mollymawk‘s journey north through the Chilean channels showed us the difference that a drop of sunshine makes – or rather, ’twas not just the sunshine but a change in the wind.
After just over 13 months in the Chilean Channels, Mollymawk has finally arrived in Valdivia. The journey from Puerto Williams north to the city of Valdivia is one that can be done in a week, and very few people spend more than three months – but we like to take a close look at the places we visit. In the course of this year and a bit we’ve still barely scratched the surface of this unimaginably vast, largely untouched wilderness…
When Bill Tilman set off across the South Patagonian ice cap his ship was left in the command of one W. A. Procter. Tilman never refers to him by any other name, and so Procter he shall be to us also (although I happen to know that his name was Bill). Of Mischief‘s entire crew this man was the only one besides the owner who had done any offshore sailing before they set out for South America, and he had…