Tigre and Christmas at Iguazu

Our camping in Tigre, by the water, 50mn north of Buenos Aires. Calm but full of mosquitoes. To get to town, you take a boat here, so Steph is wating for it on the quey here.

Iguazu ... immense ! about 300 huge waterfalls. Even better when it's 35 degrees!

A jewel ??? no, a beatle

drinking the very traditional Argentinian green tea : the Mate. Everybody drink from the same cup, it's quite representative of the way of life here. In a garage, you'd be invited to share a mate for example.

Animals of Patagonia

500 000 Pinguins of Magellan. They are very nosy and come to us. What a comical way of walking. When you think about it, isn't it extraordinary that this animal is, in fact, a bird !

The "Right Whale", ( la Baleine franche Australe) weighs 40 tons and is not very shy.

Sea lions... enormous, but can run fast after you if you're too near on the beach. So, we didn't venture nearer than 2 reasonnable 3 metres !

Beautiful show at Mundo Marino near Buenos Aires. Un Orque... this is a meat eater and it's about 6 times as big as a Dolphin !

El Chalten - A most beautiful mountain scenery

Arriving at El Chlaten, we were all too happy to get out of the Tremelody and walk.

Stephane went straight to the Glacier of the Cerro Torre where he did some training for the Alps !

Here is the Cerro Torre, on dirait un pic tire d'un livre de Samivel, non?

One of the most scenic views of mountains I have ever seen. Summits are so sharps they look like a big cat's canines.

We still need to drive 4000km to Buenos Aires, but Tremelody gets sick on the way in the endless steppes of Patagonia, on very windy day ( not the most thankfully! Winds here can go up to 160km/h which make it hard for the sheep farmers to work sometimes).

So, we spent 2 days ( it was pilgrimage week, so everyhthing shut) in a town of patagonia in a nice hotel ( mmmmmmmmmmmmmh ! comfort !) doing lots of studying and buying a mini Christmas tree !

Perito Moreno 2

The Perito Moreno Glacier, 13 km long. It is situated on a lake and comes forwards in the lake at a pace of 2 metres per day. It is part of a huge glacier 500Km long higher in the Andes.
It's ice is so compacted that it sometimes turns blue.
You can see it very close, either from a boat or from the bank of the lake ( around 50m from it )that's why it's so impressive. In this region of glaciers, it is the only one that stays stable. The other ones are shrinking.

What most impressed me was to be in a middle of a forest so close from the glacier. I remember glaciers so high up that nothing will grow around. The altitude of the Perito Moreno is 1000m.

Change of look !, We now got a Yeti with us and he goes to shower at a water fall ( can you see it just behind ?)

Cool ! I can do it too ! Do you like me new rocker look ?

Going all the way down Patagonia

Good fun after a 10 hours drive ...

For all the family ! We you think about it, there definitely are more than one way to use a See-Saw ! Here is Steph trying one.

We stopped at an Estancia for the night. The road is so windy ( can be up to 160km/hour and drive the farmers mad ! ) that we can't just stop on a side road ( in fact there are no side roads, it's all straight !).

The estancia is at the far back of the picture. They have 23 000 sheep ( yes, 3 zeros) on a
100 000ha land... pretty big !

... which give them 100tons of wool exported to Germany and Japan. Here is the wool.

Life is beautiful !

We start the "7 lakes road " and never finish it because we stop at the 2nd lake, the Lago Correntoso and are so happy there that we stay. Here is a family of wild ducks; Romane will be playing with the ducklings for the three days we stay here.

Water is fresh but it's the perfect way to wake up. We have been getting a bit too use to slepping late in the last weeks, and each time Stephane says ( which is quite often !): " tomorrow, we start early; at 6, we're gone", we all have a good laugh because, of course, it never happens !

Here is THE spot. Just right to the camper is the typical Argentinian barbecue built in evry nice place for the "asado", the grilled meet. The average consumption of meet per inhabitant in a year is 70 kg.

Washing uo in the lake; The children playing with the ducklings who have a great fright each time. When Romane releases them, they run off to the water and their mum comes running to the rescue.

Where on earth are we ?

From the 22d to the 26rd of November, we camp by the lake Nahuel Huapi in the national park

Lake Nahuel Huapi

We had a long walk in the "Bambi" forest as the children called it, a unique forest of Arrayana trees who was used as a model for the film by the Disney studio

Here the beach of the campgroung by San Carlos de Bariloche. The water here is extra fersh at around 15 degrees. We don't stay in very long !

We visit de museun of Chocolate, a speciality of San Carlos de Bariloche. It takes some energy to stir the uge batches of mixture !

The brooms ( genets) are blooming everywhere; we added our two special flowers to the bouquet.

On the way, a hairy spider crosses the road

The lake district !

Beautiful landscape awaits us in a region us lakes at the border between Chile and Argentina.

After 2 solid days of driving and sleeping on the highway, we're happy to stop in these splendid place. This is a picture taken on one of our walks in the woods just next to the campground.

Our camping spot is by the torrent. Here is Romane on one of her "islands", where she loves playing. This is in Agua Calientes a Chilean holiday resort with hot springs, as hot as a bath. The amazing thing is it s empty because the holiday period doesn't start before mid-december.

We go on a walk on the ski resort just a few miles away and the girls decide to follow Stephane on his challenge to go all the way up this mountain,( it's all black because it s a volcanic area... Thomas is very exited to pick up volcanic rocks and, once again, we have long discussion on how much he can take in the camper !) in the snow. They are proud to get there and have fun sliding back on the snow.

Thomas also does a fair part of the big treck, without moaning, we're proud to say, and has a great time running back down

Sequence Emotion! Hihaaaaaa! apres 4 mois et 12.000 Kms

Les journees se suivent et ne se ressemblent pas. La routine est d'allumer et d'eteindre le moteur, faire l'ecole a nos 3 petits, dormir bien sur! Le reste varie presque tous les jours: routes et paysages differents, nouvelles rencontres souvent trop breves malheureusement, repas improvises au detour d'un marche de village, le ressentidu voyage..

Ce ressenti du voyage, ses sentiments, ses emotions sont tout aussi peu routiniers avec des moments tres exaltants et d'autres angoissants au gre de la fatigue et du manque affectif de mes etres chers..

Je finis par me demander s'il est possible de "s'installer dans le voyage", expression un peu contradictoire. Chaque jour le voyage m'amene vers de nouvelles decouvertes, de nouveaux visages, de nouvelles expressions, bref du nouveau exaltant et parfois destabilisant. Le voyage complexifie davantage la trop simple image que j'avais de l'homme..

Il fait bon vivre ce voyage, vieux reve de 20 ans lors de mes 20 ans. J'aime a vivre cet ecoulement du temps qui parait beaucoup plus lent qu'auparavant. J'aime a vivre ces moments intenses (parfois trop intenses) en famille. J'aime a vivre ces mini-boulversements de l'interieur.

Cette derniere journee de "Toussaint" a ete boulversante. Revivre le temps de quelques heures intenses avec ces autres etres chers qui sont "au ciel". Repenser leurs visages, leurs sourires, leurs regards, leurs traits de caractere, repenser a la tristesse provoquee lorsqu'ils m'ont quitte. Ils sont pourtant bien presents. Je pense regulierement a tous ces "autres" etres chers de qui emanent divers signes, transmissions de pensees, une sorte d'energie positive en provenance du cosmos?

A Papaya conserve business on the Chilean coast

Only 70 km from the vineyard is the coast... In Chile, a narrow country only 1,5 time France, you're never far either from the coast or the mountains. " Lipimavida" uses 8 to 10 000 kilos of mini papayas (on the pic) a year for its conserve, a great help to the families of this rather deprived area, selling their fruits.

Half of the production is exported to the fairtrade market in Belgium and the other half is for the local market

It is just by the traditional fishing harbour of Vichuquen.

Boats are small and pulled out of the water by these heavy oxes, a pretty hard job !

The pacific ocean is mighty and getting through the waves near the shore to dock is not easy.

The life of fishermen is tough, all the more so as they are not independant but working for the owner of their boat. Also, the volume of catches allowed per harbor tends to shrink, which makes life harder. We found the sea rather rough on that spring day, and we wonder how tough it gets in winter in these rather frail boats.

On the road via the comfortable Chilean highway to the south, we cross endless forest plantations, on around 100 miles. Here are some Eucaliptus ( a tree native from Australia), but they are mostly pine. The weather is so favorable to this culture that the pines for example are said to grow 15 times as quickly as in Norway. Chile is a great exporter of wood and we see dozens of big trucks loaded with logs going towards the north.

Vinos Lautaro, warm meetings in the vineyards

From the group of producers of the Vinos Lautaros, situated 200km south of Santiago Raul, Rafael, Pablo, Juan, Clorino, Domingo and Eugenio went out of their way to welcome us. So much so that, after 2 days spent with them, we left with tears in the eyes. Great and moving memories for us !

10 years ago, before the cooperative was founded, this group of 14 cultivators were selling their grapes each separately to wine producers and depended greatly on the very volatile national price of grape. Today, thanks to their hard work and contact with the international markets via fairtrade, they produce their own wine , Vinos Lautaro, and it is a success story : they are about to admit more members in the cooperative.

This is the place where we parked the Tremelody, in the vineyard, by a river. It was hot and the girls made the most of the fresh water of the river, just like in the "wind in the willow ": "Wherever you go, you go with the flow, when you're mocking about on the river" would sing ratty. For Stephane, it looked more like the Shire in the lord of the rings...in short somewhere not very far from paradise.

Clorino cooks a nice improvised BBQ for us. We had arrived just 24h ago and .... a few of them decided to get together and celebrate.

What was really moving about these meeting ( we went to visit 4 of them) was that a number of these wine growers opened their heart about the changes this business has brought. What came strongly across is that they regained their dignity and opened to the world. Some of them said : "before, we didn't talk... "you should see them now, we talked hours non stop, and not just us ! Another said " I was so ahamed of myself, that once, I had to stand in a queue at the bank in town and I couldn't bear it, I just went". We spent half a day with that same person talking !

Here is Rafael, the president of the Vino Lautaro, and Pablo, who hosted us in his vineyard. Being part of the Vino Lautaro was considered adventurous when they started, because previous cooperative structures in the area all failed and ruined a great number of farmers. So only 16 brave ones at the time decided to risk it, partly thanks to Eugenio, a trustworthy technical adviser who convinced a good number of them.

Here are 5 of the wine growers plus Raul ( with the sunglasses), manager and Eugenio, technical adviser ( with the cap), who really made it happen. They are both incredibly dedicated to this business. All of them never stop praising fairtrade : " none of this (university for my children, health insurance, water and electricity at home, and our opening to the world) would have happenned witout faitrade. Encouraging for those who make fairtrade happen at the other end !

Above all for us, it is a great example of how trust and respect in a group can achieve great things. Enough for great ideas now or you'll cry in a minute !