Patagonia
I’m currently on my way to Pucon from Santiago and through Talca along the lakeland Siete Lagos. Camping on a Friday is always difficult since the locals enjoy their party culture, which can go until 5 a.m. Even here the noise level was high until around 3 a.m.
Pucon is a very tourism based place in the South, quite expensive but still okay. I managed to hike up the active volcano Villaria. It took us 4 hours to go up, the first stage was the most physically demanding due to the dried lava from previous eruptions. After this there was ice, we didn’t need to put on our crampons but later on we did have to wear gas masks because of the corrosive fumes which burns your eyes. 
Getting down the mountain had to be done via a child-like plastic slide. This is a safety measure seeing as the Volcano should be able to be evacuated in 25 minutes. The last serious eruption in 1970 killed 200 people. The towns that were effected by this are kilometers away, but the lava had a speed of 230km/h back then.
In 2015 the volcano erupted again, luckily between the busy seasons so no one was harmed.
Onward I travelled over the lakes after Panguipulli towards Valdivia. I met a lady from the Dominican Republic there. She travelled without a visa to Peru, and from there she travelled along the coast to Chile, by foot! In April she wants to travel back and has to walk another 8 hours through Atacama.
I carried on to Puerto Varas, the last destination before the South. Sadly there’s no camping places anymore. I found a German club that was founded in 1885. I drove straight through to Isla del Chiloe, very very much down south. The weather here is very inconsistent, you really realise that it’s getting closer and closer to the Antarctic.
Chiloe is an island and in order to leave it from the South, you need to take a ferry. Unfortunately you cannot book online so I powered through to Qullon to get a spot (I got one of the last ones) The ferry only goes twice a week.
It was scheduled to leave at 20:00, but due to bad weather it only came at 22:00. The loading and unloading is long and boring. Ten cars drive on, turn around and park, then the next ones drive on.
During the ferry ride, I ‘illegally’ slept in the car. It wasn’t as rough as a ride as I was expecting!
The weather was quite bad in Chaiten and so I drove through to Lagos las Torres. That say that you can experience all 4 seasons in one day here. It’s Summer, but Winter is the only season showing.
I found a cool parking place in Lago (thank you iOverlander!)
Unfortunately the weather is so bad that everyone is in hiding, I have the gas heater on even though the air-conditioning is working again! I celebrated the New Year with a horse!
I only drove to Puerto Ibanez to get the ferry to Chile Chico. For some reason, they only drive with a small ferry and they are always overbooked. The big ferry only drives every second day and the fact that they could let two ferries drive a day was obviously overlooked…
And so, Emmazwo and I are on our way back and arrived in Balmaceda, the Argentinian boarder, at 22:00. This town has an airport for jets but no petrol station. I quickly calculated how much I still needed, worrying endlessly, but it lasted. I met some Irish people who were already waiting for 10 days at the airport for a new windscreen for the VW bus. I don’t even want to know how long a Citroen windscreen costs.
I did my usual relaxing boarder crossing the next morning. All the boarder control officers wanted to the camper van. The one thought it was the ideal place to have a nap after a big meal. I played a bit with the police dog before a handshake farewell from the Chileans, and a handshake greeting from the Argentinean. The Argentinean gravel roads are back in my life…
A dirt road uses 30% more petrol than a normal road. It’s a crazy feeling when the gasometer needle is in the red field and you don’t know if there will be another petrol station, if they still have petrol or if they accept cards. So you can understand when I say I was very happy to see the sign for the next petrol station which had diesel. 
With a tank full of gas, I met a cyclist who had run into some bike trouble.
Young, Argentinean Julian who comes from Chile, didn’t have anything other than peanuts to eat since his credit card stopped working. I loaded his bike, gave him many bananas and drove him to a bank in his direction. He told me so many positive things about his homeland Rosario that I have to drive past there at some point. I happily accepted a croissant and coffee from his newly obtained money, the 60 kilometer detour doesn’t make much of a distant when you’re busy doing a 20,000 kilometer trip.
I met 2 germans at the petrol station that I had previously met on the one ferry (they didn’t get a space on the ferry. The lady quite liked my sunglasses (she hadn’t found any nice and quality ones in Chile) I didn’t have any cash on me and my card didn’t work so I exchanged my sunglasses Würth Nr.3 for 10 litres of diesel.
The germans had to wait at the petrol station since they only got a new gas load that evening. I took a young French man with me from the petrol station to El Chaiten.
The mountains here are really impressive, especially the one that I’ve been to- Fitz Roy with it’s unbelievable glaciers.
I drove on the famous RN40 for what seemed like forever.
I’ver seen many Guanacos (a type of llama) and Nandus. Sadly, a lot of the Nandus get stuck in the fences and die. There’s also a lot of foxes, Rabbits, Armadillos and Condors.
Right in front of the National Park there is free parking so every night there a lot of vehicles. My neighbours include Australians with a Czechia car, and Germans with a columbian car. I met the French people from Brazil here again, they had spent some time in Uruguay working for a german-dutch family.
The next morning, we fed our leftover pizza to the neighbours who have been travelling for some time with a small budget. We did a quick hike to the Fitz Roy, a wonderful mountain that is huge and just indescribable.
I the Nationalpark, I booked a boat tour with a guided tour. The glacier Perito Moreno is vast and tremendous- I had the luck to see some of it collapsing.
January and February are the busy season in Patagonia, but somehow they don’t have a grasp on the tourism side to it all. Everything is fully booked but they still allow more and more busses, filled with people, to arrive. I was asked by some Japanese and Chinese tourists if I don;’t possibly want to share a taxi to Puerto Natale, since all busses and car rentals are full for the next 4 WEEKS! I said “sure, but what will I do with my car?”
The next few days were tiring. 2 Japanese, 1 British, 4 Germans, 1 Chinese, and one guy from Turkey as hitchhikes. The Turkish guy has been travelling for 12 months, no Spanish and very little English but he’s still surviving!
I was once again victim to the Argentinian dirt road whilst travelling with the Japanese, a rock shattered the suspension and got a metal pole wedged between car and dirt road. It was extremely hard to fix due to the strong winds, sand was flying everywhere and I couldn’t see a thing. I replaced it and fix everything in Punta Arenas.
I had to hand in my salami and eggs at the chilean boarder and got a strict warning. I gave all my fruit to the French who had travelled from Chile to Argentina and thought that packaged food would be okay.
I had to go out to dinner that night, seeing as I was without my salami. I was surprised to see that I had chosen the same restaurant as the Japanese, who then invited me to eat with them.
Since my time was fleeing, I only made a quick stop at the Torre del Peine National Park- everything was fully booked. I picked up two more hitchhikers, two Germans from Munich and the lady studied at Weihenstephan!
Its getting a bit cold for me now, so I visited Ushuaia quickly. Very nice city which made me feel at home relatively quickly. The Argentinean man that I took with from Rio had told me a lot about it already. The have a plague of Castor (a Canadian beaver) who, since there are no bears, quickly reproduced and ‘repressed’ the indigenous animals.
Emmazwo is showing some signs that the dirt roads weren’t the best ideas. The engine isn’t igniting as well as it should and the other day I was stopped by the police because my light was out, even though I did switch it on. I switched it on and off a few times, now its working again.
The steering has also gotten a bit more difficult. I’m hoping it’s only because of the tire pressure, but I’ll have to take another look at it.
I have reached the southern most point of my travels. Now I have 4 weeks to travel 3000km back up North. I still want to visit a Estancia to ride Gauchos, as well as visit Rosario or Zarate to do some wake boarding or kiting!