I woke up on October 1st parallel parked in front of a church in Cajon del Maipo, a town east of Santiago, Chile with some pretty great crags for sport climbing. Ryan and I made our way to the closest crag, cooked breakfast in the van and then spent way too long trying to send a 5.10d route that we thought was a 5.10a (bad beta from another climber). It was extremely unsuccessful, but the crag itself was amazing, all of the other climbers around were super nice and we’d both love to go back there one day for more climbing. And to send that route.
Moving south without much more than a vague idea of where we wanted to go, we soon found ourselves in Pucón. We hit a crag there called Cerduo / La Catedral on a Monday afternoon, and there was only one other party there. The surprisingly great rock was on private property behind some trees, and we enjoyed an absolutely great afternoon out. I comfortably led a 5.8/9 route and followed a really fun easy 5.10. Ryan took a stab at top roping a 5.9 trad route, as well as a 5.11 sport route next to it, and I learned a lot about belaying somebody much bigger than me. I had one (mentally) terrifying chimney climb at Ventana Sur in Bariloche, Argentina the week later and took it pretty easy after that as I was pretty mentally shot, only leading a couple 5.8 and under routes and mostly sticking to top roping. I think I had spent my nerves pretty good and just needed a break after that, but I am looking forward to getting back on a wall soon to reset myself and improve more.
Over the course of the two weeks that we vanlifed together, we were able to get out and rock climb six of those days, skied two full days and did snow school / climbed a volcano (Volcán Osorno) for our final two before dropping the van off in Puerto Varas. We taught ourselves multipitch one of those days. I became a really good, confident belayer over that time too. And a confident stick shift driver after 5,000 km on the road. It was a lot of driving and a lot of adventuring, and I really fell in love with Chile this time around. I spent around five weeks in Chile in early 2019, and when I left, I was pretty neutral about the country. I wasn’t a fan of Santiago, Torres del Paine and a few other Patagonia towns that I hit were cool, but I preferred the Argentinean side, and Valparaíso was fun, but couldn’t carry the entire country for me. After this trip though, I feel like I have seen a LOT of the country and know it pretty well. I respect (and was a little relieved at) how much the country was similar to the US – it definitely made vanlifing through it easier. But also, we met amazingly nice people, ate some really good food, loved the Lake District and realized how diverse the country was and how much it had to offer.
Bariloche as well was a highlight of the van trip, and might have been my favorite spot (surprise surprise, another positive for Argentina in my book). We went originally for a weekend and then stayed for almost a week. We rock climbed or skied every single day there. Showing up threw me right back into Argentinian life and culture and it was a culture shock to Ryan as it was his first time there – nothing worked as we expected it to, things took way longer than we wanted and we were back to paying in cash (via Western Union transfers) for everything to take advantage of the blue dollar conversion rate. Put that’s all part of Argentina’s charm. 😅
Bariloche felt like a ski town through and through. Our first day, we went for merienda at a restaurant on the main street, and everybody in town started cheering when snowflakes started falling for a few minutes. We then learned that we happened to be there for the last few days of the season at the main resort Cerro Catedral, so we took a “rest” day after two days of climbing and hit the slopes. Not too much of the mountain was still open at that point, but the snow was good and we were both super impressed with the size of the resort and the runs we hit. We stayed out there almost until the lifts closed and we had to run to dinner plans. It was a blast.
Those dinner plans were another major highlight for me because I got to see my friend Wayne, who I met in Antarctica, and who now lives in Bariloche. When we all dispersed from the ship after disembarking into a panicked and chaotic COVID world, I ran back to the US before flights shut down and Wayne, not having anywhere he needed to be for lockdown, rented an Airbnb apartment in Bariloche that this woman Silvia owns. About two months later, a bunch of us from the trip were on a big Zoom call to celebrate our friend Odette’s birthday, and Wayne was calling from Silvia’s house instead of his Airbnb… he didn’t tell us much, but we all put two and two together, and it eventually came out that Wayne and Silvia had fallen in love while he was quarantined there and are now married! Wayne is 78 years old and is one of the coolest travelers that I have met; I absolutely loved getting to spend more time with him and finally meet Silvia, and swap travel stories and ideas about life. It felt so good to be in a home with familiar people (something that I always really appreciate during longer trips) – Ryan and I both walked out of there so dang happy that we had been able to spend the evening with them.
After finally parting with the van in Puerto Varas after a summit of Volcán Osorno, I flew back to Santiago for a few days to again stay at my hostel there, hang out with a friend from there that I hadn’t seen since 2019 and hit the job hunting flow again. I continued that hard work through a week that I spent in Buenos Aires visiting Gonzalo – he would leave for work early in the morning and I would get a few extra hours of sleep (I just can’t do those late Argentinean nights), then cook breakfast and apply to a few jobs until mid-afternoon when I would go out for my errands, appointments and plans with friends, usually ending the night by getting a late dinner with Gonzalo and then hanging out late into the night. It was a good routine and when I considered really kicking off my job hunt.
After an emotional but still really fun week in BA (more on that later… maybe), I returned to Santiago for a hot second and then made my way to Bogotá, Colombia to meet one of my best friends, Andrea, to travel there with her for about three weeks. We both love Latin America, so she flew in from Germany to see me on my trip and travel somewhere new with me. We started in Bogotá because I really wanted to see Sebastián Yatra in concert and was able to get SECOND ROW tickets for his second show there that Saturday night. Andrea is SUCH a good friend for making those plans work for me and coming with me to the concert, and it was one of the best shows of my life. 😍
I have a handful of mountain guide friends in Bogotá as well, but I arrived in Colombia weeks later than I originally thought I’d be there because of the van trip, and then extending that, and then going to Buenos Aires for an entire week… so I unfortunately didn’t get to see them or to climb anything there. All the more reason to go back! It seems like none of the travelers we talked to really like Bogotá, it’s mostly known for being rainy and not that great, but I liked it well enough and would for sure go back to check out the climbing gyms, see my friends and get in the mountains or to Suesca with them.
It’s wild having that perspective that I’ll be back to places now – I used to rush and rush to see and do everything that I could in a place, because I didn’t know when I’d be back there, if ever. I absolutely do not regret any of those past faster travels at all, I just think the mindset switch is funny, and I hope it continues to leave me with no regrets.
Never Stop Traveling 