Heading north again
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
1
5
60
Trip End
Aug 04, 2007
Puerto Natales,
Chile
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Since last time, we´ve increased the members of our Italian brass band, been chased by packs of stray dogs in various Chilean and Argentinian cities, experienced more airport shenanigans, seen some of the most beautiful scenery in the world and walked about 200 kilometres.
Patagonia is absolutely beyond your wildest expectations, it is a million miles from anywhere, it is windy, sometimes desolate, but it is welcoming and offers some of the best vistas you could ever want to see. When I finished last time we were in Ushuaia at the end of the world. It was a bit cold and a bit touristy but had a strange charm as the kind of place people come to when they don´t know where else to go. There was also a great sense of expectation as people milled around waiting to go on trips to Antarctica and Cape Horn. In all we ended up spending a week there in a funny little hostel where we felt like one of the familys´ kids as we cooked up steak-feasts, drank way to much cheap delicious red wine and watched rubbish movies. We also did some amazing stuff. We went on a boat out into the Beagle Channel and sailed along the channel first discovered by Magallenes and strangely you could really get a sense of what he and his crew found. Ushuaia isn´t a very big place so once you go beyond it in the channel all there is to see is fairly forbidding landscapes (and other boats but I ignored them in my romantic notion to be either Magallenes or Darwin). We stopped off on an island in the middle of the channel where we had Chilean Tierra del Fuego in front of us, Argentine Tierra del Fuego behind us, the Murray Channel which leads to Cape Horn to the right and a bit further than that the Pacific Ocean and to our left the Atlantic - that was pretty cool. (Useless bit of information - the Beagle Channel flows from west to east as the Pacific Ocean is higher than the Atlantic.) We were on a tiny little boat captained by a legend in Ushuaian parts named Hector who had a huge ´tache, mad blue eyes and a passion for George Harrison, John Lennon and Dire Straits. As he said to Ben "You English, we hate your military and your soccer team, but we forgive you for your music ...". Ushuaia and Rio Gallegos which we passed through on our way down were both heavily involved in the Falklands War and whilst we encountered no animosity from anyone, there were severe loss of life from both towns.
When we got back from the boat we booked ourselves onto another trip to see some ice caves the next day, went to the supermarket, bought some steak and a bottle of red wine and headed back to the hostel. 6 bottles of wine later we stumbled to bed at 3 am having had supper with and wished a lovely couple David and Heike a Bon Voyage to Antarctica and hadn´t given our hike the next day a second thought. Boy did that hurt. 7.30 the next morning we´re picked up and driven into the middle of the mountains behind the town, dropped off at a random log house, given crampons, a walking stick, some lunch and a guide called Ricardo and ushered off into the mountains. I was so hungover and jittery that I was convinced Ricardo was going to lure us into the hills and murder us with his ice-pick and the thought of a day long hike to be cold in some glacial ice caves that would probably collapse on us wasn´t in the least appealing.
It turned out to be one of the best experiences of our lives and the reason I have wanted to come to Patagonia for so long. We walked for 5 hours to a glacier on a mountain called Cerro Alvear. It was a steep climb over a couple of mountains, through forest and bogs and then when above the tree line, across shale, snow, ice and rocks. We had our lunch at the bottom of the glacier at about 1,400 m and then donned crampons and walked up it through the snow. We reached the top, feeling very pleased with ourselves and enjoyed the stunning view and the fact that we hadn´t seen another person all day. We then slid all the way back down again on our backsides and started the long walk back to the refugio spying a condor (wingspan 3.1metres) along the way. It was absolutely knackering but I had at least one of those moments when I felt supremely happy and everything in the world seemed just perfect. The day was topped off beautifully with an unexpected meal at the refugio consisting of an Asado (an argentinian barbecue) with huge sausages, hunks of lamb and steak, bread and salad washed down with red wine ..
01 Sealions on the Beagle Channel
perfect. A short snooze on their lovely day beds, and then our transport arrived to take us back to Ushuaia. Torres del Paine was going to have to be pretty special to top that. It didn´t dawn on us until we were nearly back that we hadn´t seen any ice caves. We asked Ricardo in our bad Spanish (he spoke little English and had very much the air of Silent Bob from Dogma - hand gestures and all) why we hadn´t seen them to which he replied they collapsed last year and no new ones had been found. If we hadn´t had such a great day there would have been a case for serious trade descriptions investigations.Before we left Ushuaia we met three Italian lads from Milan who we had a very nice chat with - they spoke no English, we speak no Italian, none of us spoke very good Spanish yet we managed to establish that they were from Milan, where on a three week trip of Argentina and that they wanted to share some of their delicious seafood pasta with us. We saw them on and off for the next couple of days and they were invariably accompanied by a loud trumpet sound which had Ben and I in stitches every time we heard it. It turned out that one of them had a cold and was blowing his noise with alarming regularity and volume. So now we have Domingo and his trombone from BA and Marcello and his trumpet from Ushuaia!
Final observations from the end of the world:
1: The light down there is unlike anything I´ve seen. Even on a really overcast day it is so bright that you need to wear sunglasses.
2. How does argentinian traffic work? There are no traffic lights, no roundabouts and everything is on a grid system so who has right of way?
3. Money: How does the money work? ...
02 At the top of Glacier Alvear
everything is priced in random amounts yet when it comes to paying say 2.21 and you give a round note to pay, you shouldn´t expect to get the odd 9 centavos change. Probably something to do with devaluation, I don´t know.We eventually left Ushuaia on 2nd December and flew from there to Punta Arenas in Chile where we caught a bus to Puerto Natales, the jumping off point to the world famous Torres del Paine National Park. We got a little confused in the airport at Punta Arenas and managed to get through to customs and collect our bags without having come through immigration. So we had to go back and find the passport checking place and walk back through from the wrong side to join the queue. No-one batted an eyelid and we could have easily just walked out without legally entering the country, although I thought that might be tricky when leaving again ...
Puerto Natales doesn´t have a lot to offer aside from a stunning location on the shores of Seño de Ultimata Esperanza (Last Hope Sound). We stayed in a little hostel run by a very helpful if slightly creepy guy who gave us a military style run down on how to tackle our 5 day venture into Torres del Paine and a marvellous breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon - oh the joy of not having bread and cheese for breakfast - before we went. Then we hopped on a bus and were deposited in the park three hours later. We were dong the ´W´ quite apt we felt for the Wensleys. There are several routes you can walk in Torres del Paine which can take you anything from a few hours to a week to do. The ´W´ is the most popular for those not doing day trips and allows you to get away from people and see some of the most stunning scenery you can imagine.
So we arrived, caught a catamaran across stunning Lago Pehoe to start the western arm of the W - we decided to do it the wrong way round so that we had a chance of seeing the striking Torres del Paine (basically granite mountains that are like pillars - why they are called del Paine doesn´t appear to be of interest to any of the writers of information I´ve found on the subject - must do websearch) on a clear day as it was cloudy when we arrived. We then walked with our big backpacks and camped for the next 4 nights across ever changing landscapes that gave us experience of enormous glaciers calving into vivid blue lakes dotted with even more vivid blue icebergs; dramatic snowy peaks that rumbled continuously with yet more moving glaciers; pristine lakes that are truly mint green and turquoise in colour thanks to ´glaciar milk´, deep gorges, burbling mountain streams which you can drink straight from; noisy and fiercely moving mountain rivers; more condors, pebbly beaches; open plains that look like the best English rolling countryside - everything you can possibly imagine.
Scenery so beautiful it made me cry three times ...
This made all the hard work worthwhile. We were carrying our tent, sleeping bags, cooking stuff, food and clothes with us, we were walking up really steep variously muddy, rocky, sandy slopes, through the driving rain, horrendously strong winds, glorious sunshine and the much quoted ´four seasons in one day´ that you get down here. Sometimes we were climbing as well and we loved every minute. The highlight and most rewarding aspect of all was seeing the Torres themselves which we climbed up to after having walked for 8 hours to a campsite an hour´s climb (obviously not mountaineering, but up steep rocks!) below them. We caught them on a windy (surprise surprise) but clear day and had them all to ourselves. To get there you have to scramble up the side of a moraine which is all loose boulders and sand and more than a little scary as you feel it could collapse at any moment, but the pain of getting to them made seeing them evern better as you know not everyone has that experience. Well only a few tens of thousands each year, but you feel like you´ve discovered them! We were so glad we made the effort that day as the next day was completely cloudy and people we met couldn´t see them all.
Torres del Paine is everything I ever dreamed it would be and totally indescribable in both words and pictures. Nothing can capture the colours, atmosphere, light and conditions and the rough camping, lack of facilities to clean yourselves seems to add to the drama of the place. I would say if there is one place to see the scenery of a lifetime it is Torres del Paine, although that might be controversial.
We left on the Monday 4th and got back on the Friday 8th and on Saturday we were on a 7.30am bus to El Calafate in Argentina via the stunning Perito Merino Glacier. No stop for the wicked, even though we were absolutely exhausted. We had to cross the border yet again - more stamps in the passport - and got to the glacier mid-afternoon. It´s very impressive, the equivalent of 15 storeys high and you can get right up close as it basically touches the Magallenes Peninsula. The colours and shapes are awesome and one of the most famous things about it is that large chunks of the glacier regularly fall off into Lago Argentino which it is on - athough obviously that didn´t happen when we were there. (The lake is 1500 sq km and up to 1 kilometre deep in places - similarly the glacier is 1 km high in places (thats including the bit under water!). It was truly awesome in the real sense of the word, but I have to say we were still a bit in Torres del Paine shock and it didn´t seem as special at that, not least because of hundreds of other tourists standing on the boardwalk with us. I suppose all this beautiful scenery has left us a little jaded and when you´ve done the best nothing else quite matches up to it.
Rather than going back to Puerto Natales we´d decided to stay in El Calafate (closest town to the Perito Moreno glacier) to enable us to go to El Chaltén the next day. El Chaltén is the northern entry point to the Parque Nacional los Glaciares which Perito Moreno is at the south of - and there´s a four hour drive in between the two ... There are heaps of glaciers in this area as it is part of the South Patagonian ice cap which has something like 140 of which only 14 a visitable ( I think that´s right although I might have made the numbers up). Calafate is really touristy and we stayed at your quintessential enormous hostel complete with mildly annoying american student dorm mates. We were up at the crack of dawn the next day (Sunday) to get on a bus to Chaltén to go on a two day trek into the northern part of the park where we could see the fave climbing spots of Mount Fitzroy and Cerro Torre. Obviously we weren´t climbing but our trip involved trekking (what is the difference between trekking and hiking?) crossing a river on a string and walking on the Torre glacier.
Having done it we know that organised trips aren´t for us as we can do most things ourselves and get more from it, but it was a chance to meet other people and walk on the glacier which we couldn´t do ourselves. We had great guides, a nice bunch of people, none (bar one) of whom were English but could all embarrasingly speak at least three languages and as such we felt stupid and unsure of most of what was going on despite the best efforts of the English speaking guide. The first day was a bit of a let down as the walking was fairly uninteresting and we couldn´t see the famed peaks because of the clouds. That said we didn´t have to carry our packs as tents were waiting for us and we got to chat to some interesting folk. The second day it peed down with rain consistently, I got soaked trying to cross the rope bridge suspended underneath it on a harness and being too lanky and therefore dipping my feet in the glacial waters and then I got hugely scared walking on glacier as I´m a big wuss and was convinced I was going to fall down a 500m crevasse. It was a great experience though; the bridge was hysterical as I got stuck in the middle as I´ve no strength in my arms to pull myself along it and the colours of the ice were incredible. Blues like you have never seen.
So after much needed pizza that night we spent Tuesday chilling out in El Calafate and catching up on some much needed sleep. We met a Brazilian helicopter pilot and had strange conversations with him about mussels and Brussels and tried to plan what next.
We´re now back in Puerto Natales having crossed the Argentinan/Chilean border for the 10th out of 12 times and are sorting out bits before we catch the Navimag ferry this afternoon. This will take us through the Chilean fjords to Puerto Montt which is further up in Chile and really the end of the mainland proper. It will take four days and we will see some remote parts of Chile and be a fair bit further north when we dock, whilst it´s gorgeous down here, we´re both aching for some sun.
We´ll wait and see, but it will be great to do nothing for a little while. Chau for now..
03 The beginning of the W
