OverlandSphere
Overland Travel, Expedition & Adventure Information for 4x4, motorcycle and truck overlanders
After all it was the weekend, so we decided to visit a Rodeo to see how a small village celebrates its fiesta. When your time us up, please dismount the horse carefully…. It was late Friday afternoon when we arrived in Valle Simpson ( about 20kms south of Coyhaique) and at first we thought we were…
Brad and I had waited a long time to see this place, and now, as we sipped our Nescafe, we peered into the distance in awe. Butterflies raced in my stomach and my mind was filled with anticipation. The feeling wasn’t so much caused by the view, but by the set of vocal pipes on this thing. It creaked and…
This takes the prize as not only the quickest border crossing that we’ve done but also the most fun. The Argentine side of the border is a reasonably big complex of buildings with a fairly dilapidated look about them. There is a boom across the road where you stop. The actual border building looks more like someone’s house. When we…
It took us a couple of nights to come down from our trip to Antarctica and get ready to be back on the road. Adjusting to a camper half the size of the room we’d had on Sea Spirit was only half of it. Soon enough however we had our energy back and were ready to head off. Before leaving…
My trembling hands did their best to keep my pint of ale from spilling across the rough hewn wooden table. The day was cold, but despite being indoors I couldn’t warm up. The exhilaration followed by such tragedy had sapped my body of its ability to regulate blood flow to my chilly extremities, but it wasn’t the cold that caused…
View down a valley on the Carretera Austral. This was our lunch stop. A lovely place to stop, well one of the many lovely places to stop along The Carretera Austral is Puerto Tranquilo, and from here you can take a lovely boat trip to the Cuevas de Marmol which are a set of marble caves on the lake…
The town of Coyhaique is located about half way through the Carretera Austral and is also the biggest “city” with a burgeoning population of 50,000. After so long spent on empty roads and surrounding wilderness it was a bit jarring to pull into the main plaza and be surrounded by a bustling downtown. It was however a good place to…
“When you get to the top of a wall, there’s nothing up there…the end result is absolutely useless. But every time I travel I learn something new, and hopefully I get to be a better person.” – Yvon Chouinard, 180° South We slept very little on account of the wind, tossing Nacho about like Shackleton’s rowboat. I drank my coffee,…
Just a short post as we’ve heading back into some National Parks for a while, and probably will not have wi-fi access for a couple of weeks. Things are going well, we got the Oil changed in the truck, bought our own hair cutting trimmer so Merv’s next haircut will be any day now. We discovered that our water…
With hiking finished for a little while at least, it was time to clock some miles and keep moving North. We were back on the famous Ruta 40 in Argentina which runs the entire length of the country and it appears to be never ending and really it finds it’s true heart in the wilderness of Patagonia as from…
The Carretera Austral is a true overlanders dream; over 1200 kilometers (over 700 miles) of dirt road running through Chile’s southern region, where the land breaks off into hundreds of fjords and tiny islands, connecting Chile’s remotest region with the north. I read somewhere that the idea of the Carretera Austral is as big as the road itself, and I…
During our couple of days at San Martin de los Andes in Argentina I spotted some leaflets advertising a cultural film event and so we spent Saturday evening watching a set of three films about human rights and immigration issues. The promised English sub-titles didn’t materialise although one was spoken in English anyway and sub-titled into Spanish. The third film…
Cette partie du Chili est un «Canada espagnol »: montagnes au sommet enneigé, lacs transparents avec des poissons qui sautent et dansent, les forêts de pins, les gens sympas et ouverts … This section of Chili is a Spanish Canada : snow capped mountains , chrystalin lakes full of fish that dance and jump, pine forests, the folks open and warm … On est…
Chess on the Square We explored a little of San Martin de Los Andes today. A lot of outdoor clothing stores: they obviously get a good share of tourism here. The town square is pretty large, with lots of flower beds, seating and loads of people just sitting chatting or wandering around taking in the air. A band was setting…
Checking out the camera in front of Vulcan Villarrica After taking a drive part way up the side of Vulan Villarrica it was time to head towards our next border crossing. A drive through the pretty countryside towards Argentina was without mishap and the border crossings pretty straightforward. Once across the border we delighted in the lovely scenery, more volcanoes…
Roadside radiator repair While following the beautiful country lanes of the Ruta Interlagos today we became aware of an unwelcome smell – water coolant leaking out into a hot engine compartment. The bumpy corrugations of the Ruta Interlagos has caused the radiator to jump off its mounting, lurch backward into the engine compartment, pushing the bottom hose on to the…
Having reached Cunco in the Chilean lake district we stopped at a lovely little campsite, “San Pablo”, for a couple of nights. out came the kelly kettle Unfortunately while we were there our Coleman dual fuel (and dual burner) stove broke down (again). This otherwise amazing bit of camping kit had lasted Paul for some fifteen or more years of…
…. would you believe it? When we picked up our second replacement windscreen in Santiago back in December we carried it carefully back to where we were staying in order to fit it. Unfortunately not carefully enough as a tiny tiny tiny little chip was knocked into it around the top edge by one of the bolts in the back…
After leaving Rancho Esparantajaros we stopped first just 1km down the road at a local cheese farm. To anyone who doesn’t love cheese this might not seem important. But to anyone who loves cheese, travelling outside of the UK or the US results in chronic deprivation. Chilean cheese has been the lesser of many evils so far but even here…
After leaving El Molino in Puerto Octay we thought we would be at Rancho Espantapajaros farm and restaurant for a couple of days to finalising fixing the clutch before heading south to at least our second antipodean point before the month was out. However (there’s always an however isn’t there) after Paul had replaced the oil-leaking clutch slave cylinder and…
Saturday morning we finally escaped San Pedro de Atacama. The road was blocked until 11am then they let us through, plenty loose gravel and sand washed across the road just to make things interesting. Into Calama to fuel up then a climb over some seriously high mountains (3600 Metres )back to Ruta 5 to head North. The GS’s struggling a…
It was a blustery day in 1997. Brad Pitt plodded through the mountains in tattered footwear, his worn out jacket proving no match for the icy wind sweeping down from the slopes of Aconcagua – South America’s highest peak. While the film he was making was called Seven Years in Tibet, he was actually in Argentina, just a few miles…
Ever since the start of the trip we’ve been undecided about whether to go to Antarctica or not. The heart said yes but the head said it was a lot of money. Well when we were in El Calafate a fellow overlander, Mike the Biker, who had just got back from Antarctica, told us how brilliant it was and then…
Well the long awaited visit to Torres del Paine National Park had arrived and let me tell you it didn’t disappoint. What a wonderful park to visit for mainly scenery but also for wildlife such as guanacos, huemules, foxes, condors, flamingoes, swans, wood-peckers, and of course the puma , all of which we saw EXCEPT the puma which eluded us…
Last night more rain, more power cuts but not as bad, spent a good night with Eduardo and got an early night so we could head this morning. When I went to pay I realised (or so I thought) that the bank had given me 2000 peso notes instead of 10,000 so me, Mr Angry marched up to the bank…
We set off yesterday from Antofagasta with a quick stop at the Tropic of Capricorn for a few photos then headed inland (East) towards San Pedro De Atacama, after Calama Fiona could see lightning in the mountains, it got blacker and blacker and we could see the storm heading for the same place as we were going. Into the town…
… is the question I ask myself as I make my way through the chilly morning air towards the shower block. And then I realise. Of course, it’s February. I’m not in England where the snowdrops are heralding the first signs of spring. Here the apples and plums are nearing the end of their fruiting, the blackberries are ripening on…
Well, my time at El Molino draws to a close as Paul is due back later today and it will be time to say some sad goodbyes and move on again. I seem to have been temporarily adopted by various families who find it unusual that someone should be camping alone, and my pink hammock proved popular with some of…
Le début de la fin… Nous avons atteint les 2 derniers pays de notre liste (bien que ce ne soit pas les plus petits), et nous avons encore du chemin à parcourir! L’Argentine et le Chili sont comme le jour et la nuit. Les argentins ont un style de vie proche des espagnols : magasins ouverts le matin puis fermés pour la…
Some of you may be wondering where we are going and why and for how long. Well,,,considering the pound has just dropped its pants to the other currencies of the world we may be home sooner than later. I’ve no idea why the pound is so weak considering the Euro and Euro Zone are in such a bad shape. The…