Moai… everywhere, everywhere! You know those big stone-head things for which the island is famous? They’re called ‘Moai’, and there’s almost 900 of them.  Many of them are either nose-planted, face-down in the dirt or buried out of sight, but a famous few are standing proud and are widely photographed. We left Cuthbert behind in Santiago for a few days and headed to Easter Island to investigate with this Easter Island blog.
Tag Archives: South America
Wine and high peaks
Our main mission in Mendoza was to learn about the region’s wines. The city is Argentina’s capital of winemaking, which in itself is a good enough reason for a visit. But it’s also a rather cool city, with wide tree-lined streets, shady plazas with fountains and statues, a strong street-café culture, great bars and restaurants… where better to spend Easter?
From Dinosaurs to Space Town
Oh no! Not another view of snow-capped peaks, venting volcanos, aqua-marine mountain lakes set against a back-drop of clear blue skies (yawn 🙂 )! We hadn’t thought it possible to tire of southern Chile’s spectacular landscapes, but after weeks of relentless picturesque mountain views appearing around every bend, we were itching for a change of scene. We have now scientifically proven that you can indeed have too much of a good thing (provided of course that the relevant ‘good thing’ isn’t chocolate – you can obviously never have too much chocolate).
Place of many volcanos
Chile is rather famous for its volcanos and has quite a few of them, particularly gathered around the Lake District to the north of Puerto Montt. Now in our view, lakes are lakes. There are many around the world and although often very beautiful, they rarely fascinate in the way that a volcano can. So we found ourselves driving through the Lake District largely ignoring what would otherwise be notably scenic lakes and focussing on the volcanos – several of them very much still active. The most recent eruption was Volcan Calbuco which popped-off less than a year ago on 22nd April 2015, so these aren’t merely relics for geological historians. Here’s out Chile volcanos travel blog…
From Iveco to Church and Back
Life on the road in Cuthbert is a joy, but not without its frustrations! Everyday housekeeping hum-drum and the inevitable technical issues that arise with all motor vehicles are not escaped on the road; in fact they are sometimes magnified in significance. So just to prove to Cuthbert blog-readers at home that overlanders suffer at the hands of the mundane too, we’ll start this Chiloe travel blog with a bit of practical stuff, then sit back and wait for the messages of sympathy to come flooding in 😉 Continue reading
The Carretera Austral
High on the list of ‘World’s Most Iconic Road Trips’, Chile’s Carretera Austral is a long, scenic drive down the western side of the southern Andes. It runs some 1,200 km south from its start in the city of Puerto Montt. As with Ruta 40 in Argentina, you can’t really say that you’ve ‘driven Chile’ unless you’ve done ‘The Carretera’. So here we go… starting our Carretera Austral Blog, where else, but at the end.
Stunning views along The Carretera
Ice, Mud and Mountains
Inconveniently for us, the sights to be seen as we head north up the Andes sit alternately either side of the Argentine/Chile border, requiring more frequent border crossings than we would normally care to tackle. From Torres del Paine in Chile we now need to cross back into Argentina, first destination: the Perito Moreno Glacier and it’s gateway town of El Calafate. This glacier is another of South America’s most visited tourist attractions and the border crossing is therefore choked with coach-loads of tourists. We get caught in a frustratingly long queue, but finally Continue reading
Introducing… The Andes!
We’re going to be doing a lot of ‘heading north’ in 2016, so from Punta Arenas we’re starting the New Year as we mean to go on… heading north! The (extremely) vague plan for the next few weeks is to zig-zag randomly between Chile and Argentina, up western Patagonia and the southern Andes. This will be our introduction to South America’s proper mountains. It’s a well-trodden route, up the Carretera Austral in Chile and Ruta 40 in Argentina. There’s a lot of Continue reading
‘Home’ for Christmas
Our over-landing in Cuthbert was temporarily suspended for a fabulous little boat-jaunt to Antarctica. All very amazing… but now we’re back home in our beloved Cuthbert and back to normality (well, ‘normality’ to the extent that we can have such a thing in our ‘Cuthbert lifestyle’). We’re wondering what’s in store for Xmas? Continue reading
Antarctica
We could gush ridiculously about Antarctica but there simply aren’t enough superlatives in the English language to do so. Let’s start this Antarctica cruise blog with a simple ‘Wow!’ and take it from there… Continue reading
Far South Argentina – to the End of the World
A great deal of nothing!
Between the worthwhile sights of Patagonia there is very great deal of nothing. Vast flat pampas plains dotted with estancias/ranches, herds of cattle, roaming horses and the occasional beret-clad gaucho galloping between them. In our last blog-post we rambled on a bit about the marvellous marine and wild-life here, but what else can we say about our travels down eastern Argentina? Continue reading
Eastern Argentina – Pampas, Whales and Welsh
It’s a loooong way south through Patagonia. From BA to Ushuaia at the bottom of the continent, it’s over 3,000 km in fact, so we won’t be doing it in an afternoon. We’re heading down the eastern side of Argentina, across miles and miles (and miles) of vast, flat pampas land. It is featureless, but strangely all the more beautiful for this. We’re in no hurry and will be taking it slowly, in short hops Continue reading
Buenos Aires or BA?
Street art – BA-style
Those in-the-know casually refer to it as ‘BA’ but until we get to know each other better, we’ll start with the more respectful ‘Buenos Aires’ 🙂 It is another of our ‘Bucket List’ cities that we have wanted to visit for many years. I read the story of Eva Peron some years before it was brought into popular culture by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber and was looking forward to seeing the city’s ‘Evita Landmarks’. But although Eva Peron (arguably after Diego ‘Hand of God’ Maradona) is the world’s most famous Argentinian, there is much more to Buenos Aires than her memory.
On the outskirts of the city we spotted below us from the fly-over, a ‘Museo de las Malvinas’. Hmmm… this could be Continue reading
Gauchos and Pie Town
After over five weeks at sea, we are so excited to get Cuthbert onto dry-land to start the South American adventure. Our priority on arrival in Montevideo is to restock with food, gas and diesel, then to come up with a plan for the next few days. Maybe Gaucho Festival Argentina?
Decision Time!
It’s Thursday and the is Gaucho Festival Argentina is in San Antonio de Areco this weekend. It’s some 700 km away from Montevideo. We would very much like to see the authentic gathering of the regional gauchos and watch them compete their skills, but if we do so we will have to skip Montevideo and go straight to San Antonio. It’s a tough decision, but we decide that Montevideo will still be there next year when we come north again. The Gaucho Festival is an annual opportunity and we are unlikely to be able to tie these dates into next year’s itinerary. So the Gauchos Continue reading
To Montevideo… by freight ship
Montevideo from Hamburg by cargo ship… Done! Yes, we’ve spent October 2015 on a freight ship Europe to Montevideo. We’re bringing our camper-truck Cuthbert to Uruguay to start our tour of the Americas. No scrubbing of decks, peeling of potatoes or climbing of rigging – we took one of six fare-paying cabins on the Italian Grimaldi freight ship ‘Grande Nigeria’. And in anticipation of the obvious question… we’re doing it because we can, and because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
All aboard the Grande Nigeria to Montevideo!!
So was it such a good idea… over five weeks at sea with minimal facilities and no internet??!! Well… at least we had plenty of time to write all this bog-blurb stuff 🙂 Read on and see what you think. Continue reading
Preparing Cuthbert for South America
After a year of operating Cuthbert in Africa we can say (at the risk of inflating his ego 🙂 ) that he really is a great truck and has exceeded our expectations in many respects. But even with Cuthbert’s level of greatness there is always scope for a few ‘technical tweaks’ to add ‘the icing on the cake’. We are now preparing Cuthbert for his next expedition to South America in September. So what’s being done?
Brakes – installing an electro retarder. Like many other Iveco Daily 4×4 users we have spoken to, we have been disappointed with the brakes. The problems are not significant with general driving around flat and low-hilly areas where only minimal braking is required, but the weaknesses become apparent on descents of long, steep mountain roads. So far we have had a couple of ‘hold-your-breath’ moments (in Lichtenstein in the Alps and in Lesotho, Africa), and as we are heading to the Andes later this year, we though we had better get this sorted. If you know or care what an ‘electro-retarder’ is, click here to read more.
Extending the range – extra fuel tank. Cuthbert currently has a total fuel capacity of 240 litres and a range of around 1,600 km/1,000 miles. So far so good. But from our research we’ve discovered two potentially limiting factors in South and Central America: first, between Panama and Mexico there is only very high sulphur diesel available – not good with Cuthbert’s Euro 5 engine. Secondly, due to government bureaucracy, it can be difficult for foreigners to obtain fuel of any quality in Bolivia. With Cuthbert’s new additional fuel tank, he will have a total fuel capacity of 400 litres, giving a range of around 2,630 km/1,630 miles to get us through the ‘trouble spots’ without needing to refuel! Impressive, huh? Click here for the detail on how we squeezed the extra capacity into Cuthbert.
Cooling the fuel. It seems that under certain driving conditions, the diesel in Cuthbert’s tanks can get a bit too toasty. Even the least technical amongst us could hazard a guess that the words ‘over-heating‘ and ‘diesel‘ are an undesirable combination for a vehicle. Click here for the solution sported by the ‘new, improved’ Cuthbert.
Phew! And as if all this isn’t enough excitement… Cuthbert is also sporting a new Multi-voltage Battery Charger (click here for more info) and a Gearbox temperature monitor (click here for a clue as to why…).
Coping with tropical rainy seasons (update April 2018): After finishing South America and heading into our second serious tropical rainy season, we looked back to our 4 months in the Amazon last year and realised that we could have perhaps prepared better for life in Cuthbert in extreme heat, humidty and tropical rainy seasons. Click here for how we upgraded our systems with a new super-roof-fan and a lithium leisure battery upgrade to cope with the impeding rainy season of Central America in 2018.
See Modifications and Repairs for a list of all Cuthbert’s other upgrades that we have fitted.