I am writing in the present again! Last I looked at the temperature it was minus 1 degree Celsius, so we are both starting to feel that it is time to head North. My fingertips and toes are feeling it most! The cold is also, I guess, why I am writing in present tense rather than climbing and writing later. After four days in Cordoba (three days longer than we had really intended) we headed out for our next climbing destination (Los Gigantes) yesterday. We were complete with 7 days worth of food and even more enthusiasm, only to turn around [View Full Entry]

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Here are a few more pics from Buenas Aires. [View Full Entry]

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We spent a couple of nights at Silvina´s mother´s place (Sonja). She made us very comfortable: cooked us lots of great food and laughed (in good humour) at our bad spanish. Capitan Sarmiento is a nice town. A real town. It was good to walk around a place that real people live, and live seemingly comfortably. There were not any super extravagant houses, like there are in Bariloche, but there were no slums either (like there is in Bariloche.) Aside - I forgot to mention, in my earlier writing that the second time we came in to Bariloche, it was from [View Full Entry]

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here are some more pics from our road trip. [View Full Entry]

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We hung out in Bariloche at Daniel´s place for a few days, and enjoyed plenty of Argentine hospitality - dinners and asadas courtesy of some of Daniel´s pals. While there, we went climbing at one of the most popular sport climbing areas near Bariloche called Valle del Encantaldo, or something like that. It was amazing volcanic rock. Very sculpted with lots of spires and towers. It reminded me a bit of Smith Rock, but the rock was not quite as good. Beautiful setting, right on the river. Like a lot of good rock around Bariloche, it is on private land - [View Full Entry]

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So, nature, it seems did have other plans for us. Volcan Chaiten, just over 100km away (but in Chile) started throwing up ash, which was being blown over to Esquel and beyond. The night of the eruption we felt an earthquake (caused by the volcano), and then woke up to an ash covered tent and town. Even so, we met up with Phillipe and Laurence , and then spent a day getting ready for our hike, cleaning up all our stuff and buying food. Part of getting ready involved Laurence and Phillipe going to the tourist office to ask about the [View Full Entry]

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Here are the other pictures I promised :) [View Full Entry]

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Wow. I can´t believe that I am FINALLY writing a blog in the present tense. Right now we are in Esquel after 49 hours of bus travel (almost 15 hours of which was spent waiting in Comordo Rivadavia from 5:30am till 10pm). This was not much fun. We found a big mud and dirt escarpment behind the city that we walked to the top of. The city was in a very dry, stark setting and with its dirt escarpments, it looked a little like a mini Lima. At least, what I imagine Lima looks like, as I have not been there [View Full Entry]

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Getting in to El Chaiten was so exciting. even though the town has been built solely to serve tourists, as the gateway to the famous Los Glacieres National park, it was still low key in feel. You could still walk from one end of town to the other end of town in 15 minutes, (even though Jono said it is about twice the size of when he was there ten years ago). There were no big huge in your face look at me motels... yet. Actually, I tell fibs, there were one or two being built. The roads had not been [View Full Entry]

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The next part of our Patagonia rock stars tour was going to be Los Glacieres National Park to see Fitzroy and Cerro Torre, weather permitting. However, we met some really nice people (a woman from Hong Kong called Toffy and a French Couple, Laurence and Phillipe) at Torres Del Paine who were planning to go the Puerto Merino glacier. We all decided that it would be a lot cheaper for the five of us to rent a car to get out there, then to take a tour bus, which was the only other option. Jono and I had always considered going [View Full Entry]

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