Vipassana

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232 hours of silence and 117 hours of meditation is now over! I feel so relaxed and happy, I feel peaceful and balanced. It wasn't easy. So many mixed feelings and a roller coaster of emotions.

Punta Zero in Putaendo was such a beautiful place. I felt the zen immediately when I arrived. And best part was to see how fast the spring had come, apple and peach trees blooming, lady birds and dragon flies flying all around. We had private twin rooms and very nice garden and fish pond to walk around on our breaks. But lets get to the course.

Vipassana meditation, how to control your mind. Dhamma is teaching you how to get rid of missery, sorrow, sadness, cravings, guilt,.. And how to enjoy real peace, real harmony and real happiness. Reminding that you are the one responsible for your own happiness, not others. Reminding that only judge your own actions, not others. Reminding that you can only change yourself, not others. And this is what I needed. For me, it is sometimes so hard to understand how someone can act or say things they do. I try to fit everyone on my own patterns wether it is their style of life or not. I learnt to be compassioned with these thoughts and realiasing it is not away from me if someone else does things that I don't approve.

Every morning we got up at 4am to start our meditations. Followed by breakfast and little break before continuing. My second and last meal was served at 11am and after that I was allowed to have glass of lemon or ginger water at 5pm. Yes, I was hungry! But not that hungry as you could imagine. Body gets used to it quite quickly. But the food wasn't as goor or nutrious as in Nepal. One girl ate only kiwis and mandarins in every single meal. Don't know how she managed :) I found it, that the afternoon lessons were the hardest ones. It was warm outside, sun was shining and light kept coming to the meditation hall. People were turning, moving, changing position, couching, sneezing, farting, coming and going,..

Best part of the day was 7pm discourse. I was the only non spanish speaking white person, so I had private session with N.K. Goenka himself (on video). He talked about the day and gave new instructions for the following day. Almost everyday some questions had come to my mind and every night Goenka explained them without me even asking. If you had problems, after our last meditation at 9pm you could stay and ask questions from the professor. I stayed once but it didn't help, there was a huge language barrior between us.

I really think everyone should take a moment of their day to meditate as it will help you to realize many things much better. And also feel better about yourself. I feel like a new person once again. Last time it lasted 6 months before I was back being an old me judging and feeling bad about myself. This time I will really keep practicing so I won't loose it this time. I met so wonderful, open, good hearted people that I am really going to miss. We only had time to chat with other people few hours before the course started and less than 12 hours after the course, but still manage to make good friends.

Cochamo Valley

Cochamo, right in the fjords with wooden houses and snow peak mountains around us.. I could stay here forever! We had heard about place called La Juna. 20km from town, rocky and muddy path where you can only get by walking (summer time you can hire a horse). Yes, that is place for us!

I could have left half of my stuff somewhere waiting us to come back, but only few small shops were open. What the heck, I can carry three books, three shoes and all my summer clothes which I don't need. We got a ride end of the road where we put our backpacks on (I am not lying when I say it was at least 25kg! with all the stuff and food for the next four days in it) ready to walk. Rob had left our map somewhere so we could only follow the path and hope that there wouldn't be any turns.

It was heavy. I was very tired when we got there, beautiful vast area with few shelter and huge cliff around us. Cochamo Valley is said to be Yosamite of the South (National Park in California). And it was! Many waterfalls and cliff reminding me of a Half Dome. We put the fire going and were thing could we just put our tent inside the shelter.. It was suppose to rain. At that point we didn't know it would rain the next three days. We ate and chilled and eventually set our tent inside because it had started to rain very heavily. Nobody else was around so we got the whole campsite and cabin for ourselves once again.

It rained the whole night!! And morning also. But what was more annoying was mice!! We had to move our food bags zillion different times during the night and still those f@#cking sh§%he%d bas@¡rds manage to get into our food. We got company from the next campsite, had tea and oaid our stay. Afternoon it eased little bit so we went for a walk. Those paths are not very well maintaned or sign posted. Got totally lost at some point and my heart started already racing what if we don't find back.. But we did, completely soaked and exhausted.

Second night those little friends of ours continued their fiesta and I was the biggest grumpy bum what you can imagine. Ready to walk back in the rain. Rob manage to cheer me up and convince us to stay one more night. We went for another walk, crossed the river to see Toboganes waterfall. It was rock formation like a waterslide, with beautiful turqoise water beneath it.

We cooked all our meals on fire. It usually took one hour or little bit more to get it going with wet wood. We had two pans to cook with so we had to prepare everything one by one. But I loved it. Even though it was cold and rainy, fire made it feel so cozy and cooking was it's own event of the day. We didn't have any hurry, we had the time.

Saturday we woke up when it was still dark, it was frosty outside and amazing starish sky! Clouds had finally moved :) Hike back down didn't feel much easier. It was still very muddy, lots of puddles and streams to be crossed. Wooden blanks were really slippary and I think climbing up the rocks was easier than going down. With one backpack infront and back. But we made it, tired but happy!

We took bus to Puerto Montt where I took a night bus back to Santiago and will head straight to Putaende (1200km journey), where I will spend the next 12 days, participating 10-day Vipassana Meditation course. You can read my feelings from my first course in Nepal (2012) from here! Rob stayed down south, he will go Chiloe island and few national parks. We will catch up in Puerto Chacabuco in few weeks time.

Lago Llanquihue

We have arrived to the Lake District! I don't even know how many lakes in total, but I can tell you that it is gorgeous in here :)

First we stayed in Puerto Varas, Mama Hostel was so cozy and warm! I can't remember the last time when I have been able to wear just a t-shirt inside. I could have stayed inside that hostel for days. Town was too pretty for that tho. Here are many towns with German influence, bakeries and hostels, houses and architect. We did a daytrip to Frutillar, which was total old people paradice with German atmosphere. I loved the houses and the view to the Osorno volcano. This county has more than 200 volcanos!

After that we moved little bit further on the lake, to Ensenada. It is still winter in here (oh this is the furthest south either of us has ever been) so nothing is open. No hostels, no restaurants. Luckily one campsite was open so we put our tent up right next to the beach.

Laguna Verde wasn't that amazing, but a cat who followed us like a dog was :) It was really hard to walk in that path, last year Volcano Calbuco errupted covering everything in dark, heavy ash. It was like black sand. We continued walking and thank good got a ride top of Volcano Osorno. There was a skilift taking you even higher but we desided to walk. You could see the very top of the volcano so close to you. But we were told it is a very difficult climb. It felt so weird to be so close.

We found a path which took us through a forest and lava field. Views.. I just can't believe how beautiful it is here every single day!! :D Path took us close to the Lake Petrohue and river with massive waterfalls. Not high, but wide. Enormous volume of water, they should use that power to make some energy.

Pucon

We had a quick stop in Santiago before heading here. Surprised positively. Nice street art also, great parks and exhausting cerros! But not much to tell, we walked around and went totally bananas in the market. So many different fruit, veggie and nut stalls.. We did our first (and last) walking tour, too much history and too little stories. 

Pucòn. Paradise in low season, but I can see this place being totally crammed during Jan/Feb.  Right by the lake Villarica, amazing volcano just half an hour away, three different national park around. You won't be bored here.

First we thought we would climb the volcano. Snowy cone and you can actually see lava from the top. Villarica errupted in March 2015, keeping climbers away for the next nine months. After that the price increased to 130$ which is pretty harsh just for a daytrip. We desided not to do it. Had amazing daytrip to El Cañi park, perfect snowy day in winter wonderland. Hike was steep but it was totally worth it, view from the top was superb! I only wished I would have had snowboard to come down :) We took a tour to Geotermatics ,one of the top 10 thermals in the world! Amazing, such a beautiful place. 16 pools with water around +40°C. Three hours went so quickly watching the stars and lying on the pools.

I feel old, boring and uptight. Really. I don't like backpacker hostels anymore with young people partying, but more than that I really can't stand weed smokers. And here (as in all latin-america) everyone smokes! I needed to escape our room to avoid people from our hostel, which made me really feel lonely when everyone else where laughing for stupid jokes, which weren't that funny unless you were high. Three very ill slept nights and walking all day longs isn't a very good combination.

Valparaiso

Back in Chile. Our journey cross the border was very interesting and slowest of all crossings. It was also very absurd to experience snowy mountains, snowstorm and shorts weather plus sunshine on a beach in 24 hours.

Los Liberadores border stands in 3800m and we were stuck there for few hours because there was no electricity. It was snowing and foggy, couldn't see even 5m. Few hours wasn't long as we heard that sometimes the snow keeps the border closed for days, even weeks!

I fell in love for Valparaiso immediately. I think it was mix of San Francisco and Berlin :) Street art everywhere, people chilling at the parks and performing on the streets. Even saw a 'topless day' gathering in one of the parks :) hippies! Surrounded by the hills (cerros) all the streets were steep and winding, only accessed by exhausting climb or taking a funicular (we took the oldest lift up, Concepsion from 1883).

Bus and metro system was brilliant! We took a bus to Viña del Mar to spend the day on a beach. Water was freezing so not even consideribg swimming. We didn't do much as our hostel Costa Azul b&b was so nice and cozy, so it was so nice just to spend time in there. Beautiful view towards the bay and city. Rob was thrilled about marine vessels and submarines. Which we actually saw leaving the harbor.

Today is our 200th day of our trip! 133 days still to go, but recent days we both have felt anxiety about this trip being almost over now that the date is settled. There has been quite a lot of arguments what will we do as we don't have time to do all the things both of us wants to do. And we can't go down to Patagonia just yet because everything is still closed because of the winter. We don't want to go back to Argentina because it was so expensive and I want to be back in Santiago middle of September. I don't know what are we going to do next.

Uspallata-Penitentes

We left Mendoza, though it was really nice city, but it started to be too expensive. Why is it that always in the cities you end up spending more money? I think Mendoza was one of the nicest big cities we have been :) Next destination SKIING!!

Season ends this Sunday so we just made it. Few hours out of Mendoza, close to Chile is a ski resort called Penitentes. For us it was too expensive to stay in the resort so we stayed town called Uspallata an hour away. If you have seen movie Seven years in Tibet, you have seen the surroundings.

First day we took bus to Puente de Inca, ancient natural bridge above the river. Used to have some thernal baths also before landslide destroyed it 1965. Hiked up Aconcagua mirador to see the highest mountain of Southern hemisphere (second highest after himalayas). It was so great to be in the snow! I know it is winter here but for me it is summer, and playing in the snow and skiing in the summer, crazy!! :) I made a snowman top of the hill! Snow was still really deep, more than a meter, but really wet in the afternoon sun.

Second day my dream came true! I have been skiing/snowboarding since I remember (happy 25th anniversary this year), but always in Scandinavia. We had family tradition to take week 16 off, and go skiing to Lapland, northern Finland (or Sweden). So when I realized I will be close to slopes that are 7km long, surrounded by mountains I really wanted to go. And the day was perfect!! Probably one of the best days on this trip :) there was hardly any people, I got the slopes all to myself, sun was shining, +10°C and no wind. Just perfect. Reminded me of all our skiing holiday. Thank you mum and dad taking us to ski every year <3 plus their card machine wasn't working and I only had peso worth of 15$ so I got the ticket very cheap!!

Mendoza wines

Since I started working in Alko 2008, tasting and knowing some better wines, Argentina became pretty quickly my favorite in reds, especially Malbec (New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc being the best white one). At that point I never thought I could be visiting some of the wineries some day what I was selling for our customers. But now I am here!! Visiting and tasting the best wines what I have liked for years :)

We took a bus to Maipu and rented bikes. First stop was Trapiche, after that we stopped in olive farm Santa Augusta. Continued to Tempus Alba to have superb lunch and tastings. Oh, that Malbec! Malbec is the reason I love Argentinian wines. At Viña El Cerno I had my first sparkling wine for ages! I can't even tell how good it felt to feel the bubbles, perfect combination of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Mevi we just had so stop for the view, magnificent panoramic view to the Andes, snow peaks above the vines, sun was shining and we had our tastings of Chardonnay, Torrentes and Malbec Rose. Perfect, just perfect!

Our last stop was LAUR, olive farm. Tons of different olive oils, I have admit that I didn't know that there arecso many different varieties. Tasting was great, dipping bread in different oils, two different tapenadas plus fresh olives! I think I could stay here :)