Principally, Chile is really clean and very economically developed. Naturally, I recommend to wear barefoot shoes in Santiago and other larger cities although the danger of stepping onto pieces of broken glass is not much greater than in Vienna. In the smaller towns and villages of Patagonia there shouldn't be to great a risk of going barefoot. And since it rains so much there, plants with thorns are extremely rare - in fact I don't remember seeing a single one.
Even though January is high summer in Chile, temperatures dropped down a lot sometimes, for example in Torres del Paine National Park. When it rained and I was already feeling really cold, I was glad to have brought my Vivobarefoot hiking shoes for keeping my feet warm.
From the Torres I went further north to Argentina and El Calafate, featuring the famous glacier Perito Moreno. Spectacular!
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| Iceberg drifting off the glacier "down" Lago Argentino |
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| A recognizable sight: the condor |
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| Perito Moreno |
After Calafate the next stop was El Chalten - Argentina's trekking capital. On the picture below you see Mt. Fitz Roy.
After a quite rough border crossing in no-man's-land - and back in Chile - another three-day hike led me through Cerro Castillo. This mountain range is similarly breathtaking as the area around Chalten, but the advantage is that there are hardly any people hiking in the area - you can really enjoy nature in piece.
Some more pictures:
the three above are all in Cerro Castillo
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| Volcano Puyehue |
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| Volcano Osorno |
