450 km behind us now, and we’re in Los Ángeles for provisions and as many french fries as we can eat in two days. Our return to the trail from our last resupply went very smoothly. We’ve come to find that we can rely on easy hitchhiking to return us to remote trailheads – our record is something like one car in three giving us a lift. As Leo and Andrea promised in Santiago, Chileans are promising to be remarkably friendly and helpful folks. The environments we’re passing thro

The first 240 km of the hike done, and we're in Chillan for resupply. While we plan to put down a thorough write-up of the trail (complete with Piia's photos) after we're finished the trail, we'll post some quick updates (with a few photos from Oliver's small camera) on our resupply days along the way. Back when we'd first started looking into hiking the Greater Patagonian Trail, one of the first things we said to each other was that a big chunk of the beginning of the trail

We arrived at our farmstay - a small dairy farm outside of San Clemente - almost 10 days ago, and life has changed considerably from the polluted cacaphony of Santiago. Tiny one-lane dirt roads, lined with little family farms with cornfields, orchards, vineyards, cows, horses, chickens and sleeping dogs. We've a small room with a friendly family (Sergio, Pachy, Sofia and Ignacio); organic cheesemakers who've hosted plenty of volunteers, but seem to appreciate our farm skills

I don't think we arrived in Santiago with an excellent idea of what it had to offer, and our plan to stay for a couple of days was as much about breaking up the trip as it was to take in the Santiagueno sights. In retrospect, it's not really our kind of town – dense smog obscures the view of even close-ish hills, the kinds of places tourists seek out (those that there are) are on the small and functional side, and it's expensive but without the associated glamour. All this i