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Published: August 10th 2007
Cerro Fitz Roy, El Chalten
The 3441m high Cerro Fitz Roy. The title of this blog originally had the word armadillo in it. However, despite 4 days looking for them on the Peninsula Valdes we didn't even find a trace. This was more than made up for by the MANY sightings of Right Whales just off shore, splashing about and doing their tail / flipper waving thing, but more on that later...
Time to start one of our blog entries with a celebration - Cath celebrated her birthday on 28th April (hurrah). To unintentionally add a touch of humour to the event, Rob got Cath a card in Spanish very carefully chosen for its message - ‘To My Wonderful Wife' (of course). Unfortunately wife is ‘esposa’, and the card read ‘esposo’, so Rob had actually purchased a card 'To My Wonderful Husband'. Cath nearly fell over laughing. It's the small things in life that entertain...
We decided to celebrate by climbing a mountain (or more like a ridge of rock) overlooking Puerto Natales (just because we hadn't had enough of going 'up' over the previous week in the Torres del Paine National Park). We then treated ourselves to pizza and an indecent amout of wine for dinner. Treats are tricky
Celebrating Cath´s Birthday
Drunk? Us? No! Look at the evidence from 2am in the morning. OK, forget Rob´s look of dispair as Cath forces him to have just one more cocktail!
when you're on a permanent budget, but we forgot said budget for one day, and after dinner ended up in a bar called Ruperto's, owned by a very friendly bloke from Leeds of all places! He very kindly gave us free chilli vodka shots, which we washed down with beer, cocktails, and pisco sour.
Hangovers were so bad that we slept through our alarm for an hour the following morning and nearly missed our 7am bus out of there. Next stop El Calafate where we hoped the world would stop bullying us, and make the pain go away...
El Calafate The main purpose of our stop here, other than to break up the journey to El Chalten, was to go see the Perito Moreno Glacier, which was breathtaking. We shared a cab with a fellow traveller to get out there. Our driver could easily have tried out for any Grand Prix or rally race, leading to some white knuckle moments as we drove on through the snowy roads. Unable to see out the windows at times due to fairly heavy snowfall, we put our faith in the fact that he must have driven the same route hundreds
Perito Merino Glacier, Argentina
Although the view wasn´t exactly picture postcard clear, the sheer size of the glacier, low cloud and huge fluffy snowflake made it a fun day. of times (and knew the brakes would save us from ploughing into the back of the van he was determined to tailgate) .
The glacier was fantastic. It was still snowing when we got there and we ran down the boardwalks leading to the viewpoints of the glacier like little kids. Just amazing (listen to us gush), the glacier rises 60 metres above the water level of the lake and is 30km long. It's a truly imposing sight and the unique blue colour draws your eyes. Like true tourists we expected chunks to fall off into the lake, which we were promised happenes every half hour or so. An hour and half later we were rewarded just before we left with a huge piece falling off the left hand side.
El Chalten The Lonely Planet describes the scenery in El Chalten as "... some of the most stunning mountain scenery you'll ever witness". After having trecked Torres del Paine (and a few other areas in the world prior to this trip) we'd consider that a fairly big call, but it's pretty amazing nonetheless. It'll come as no surprise that during our time there we climbed more mountains, took
Lago Hija, (near El Chalten) Argentina
We came across these crystal clear waters and thanked the weather for perfect photographic conditions (one for the pool room we think!). many
Lago Hija, (near El Chalten) Argentina
We came across these crystal clear waters and thanked the weather for perfect photographic conditions (one for the pool room we think!). more photo's and ate too many spinach empanadas from the great bakery in town.
The weather remained on the chilly side due to the southerly and mountainous position, so our thoughts of camping here were cancelled for the sake of self preservation and an aversion to developing frostbite. We spent at least part of all our walks here treking through snow. It was only ankle deep so nothing too strenuous. Cath was very excited after spotting a fox on the last day, it's the most exotic wildlife we've seen since the condors.
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego A 27 hour journey saw our arrival in the southernmost city in the world (and you can get a stamp for your passport to prove it - Cath got four!), which means that things were not exactly any warmer (surprise, surprise). 3C degrees on a sunny day... We tried hard not to fall off the bottom of the world, but once here Antarctica just seems so close! We arrived in drizzle, but the
Fitz Roy Range, El Chalten, Los Glaciares National Park
Unfortunately, the only way up these peaks is via rope and stong arms. Cath and Rob had neither, so settled for standing and admiring it from a distance. weather cheered up after that. Rob went on a 4 hour boat trip up the Beagle Channel with some other travellers we met on the bus (Tracey, Nik, Phil and Gareth). The trip was the cheapest on offer and the 50 year old boat (with rust holding it together), gave an indication of why. A fun time was had watching sealions, fur seals
(click to watch video), birdlife and the wonderous seascape of the Beagle Channel. Cath happily stayed put in the hostel because boats and her are never a good mix.
The rest of our days were spent getting lost in the snow on two seperate walks; some bright spark had come up with the idea of painting the yellow trail marker onto stones on the ground - extremely useful when you get a few inches of snow. We also went walking in the National Park (more successfully - markers on trees, a novel idea!), and checked out the old jail. Cath felt right at home there in the remenants of another southern penal colony. We tried to find a glacier but had to turn back halfway due to thigh high snow and instead took full advantage of said snow to
The Tree Hugger
At last, Rob was able to get at one with the trees!! become kids again with fellow explorers Tracey, Phil & Nik. Snowballs at dawn anyone...?
The National Park was beautiful, we completed the coastline walk with two other travellers - Tessa and Simon. No snow for this one (hurrah) but lots of mud after the rainfall of the previous day; along with many birds, a beaver dam, lots of trees, some ocean bays, and a weird amount of rabbits. They'd obviously been doing what rabbits do best.
Our time in Ushuaia ended with a journey to the local Irish pub, complete with lifesized R2D2. Just what you'd expect to find really.
Puerto Madryn
Yet another lengthy bus journey (this one totalling 30 hours and 1700km) found us in Puerto Madryn, it's amazing how many bad movies you can watch and sleep you can get on these journeys... Another part of the journey to and from Ushuaia that bemused us somewhat is that Chile and Argentina both want ownership of Tierra del Fuego, so have split it between them. This means that to get there you need to cross in and out of Chile both ways. We now have a silly amount of Chilian stamps in our passports.
El Chalten Valley
View down the river valley (roofs of El Chalten glistening on the valley floor - right) Obviously a lot further north we enjoyed some very welcome sun. We basked for days in 13 - 15 degree heat!. Cycled 16 km out along a less than pristine road to a sealion rookery and spent an enjoyable hour or so laughing at them. Fell asleep on the sand on the way back and our faces reacted as you'd expect after weeks with no sun exposure...
Peninsula Valdes
The peninsula is a wildlife reserve located about 120km north of Puerto Madryn. Cath was determined to go hunting for armadillo's here and we hoped to camp for a few days to try and bring our rapidly escalating budget back under control. If we don't succeed people may be seeing us back in the UK sooner than expected!
Arrived in the one street town of Puerto Piramides and found a great spot in the camp ground just the other side of a huge sand dune seperating us from the beach. Good fortune smiled down on us (either that or being there out of season helped) and no-one asked us for any money to camp there, so zero accomodation costs which was nice! Even nicer was the collie dog (just
Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego
Fin del Mundo - Literally, the End of the World. past puppydom) who adopted us on our first day. Rob called him Stan. It was very sad leaving him behind, he didn't leave our sides for a second during our stay, and sat by the bus door looking in hopefully as we pulled away. Heartwrenching...
4 days were spent walking along the deserted beaches in the sun, keeping an eagle eye open for land based wildlife. Days 1 and 2 saw us viewing another sealion colony. On day 4 we came across a Magellanic penguin who had no business being on that beach at 1pm by itself, especially since the rest of it's buddies had migrated elsewhere at this time of year. We took many excitable photo's, then left it alone to make it's escape in the next high tide.
The best action was found seawards and on each of our 4 days we were lucky enough to see many Right Whales in the bay and nearby waters near Puerto Piramides. We felt as if we were in a nature documentary, sitting on the cliff tops and watching them blow air, and roll about, showing the occassional flipper or tail to us. The most breathtaking moment came on
Seal Rock, Beagle Channel, Tierra del Fuego
Apparently, there was rock under the mass of bodies. day 2. We sat in awe watching two whales, the first had it's tail raised and slapped the water repeatedly whilst the second breached over and over again in a rough circle nearby. Damn our substandard camera zoom, we got some photo's and video
(click to watch video), but nothing that could demonstrate the scene adequately. It was made even more special by the fact that in our 4 days we didn't see a single other tourist.
So no armadillo's (yet), but we think we've been more than compensated! Next stop takes us inland to the town of El Bolson and some more mountain walking. We hope everyone is well, let us know what's happening in your part of the world!
INTERACTIVE MAP OF SOUTH AMERICA LEG OF TRIP
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Owie
non-member comment
Ah ha
The hairy man from Beeeeed ford! (kiwi accent in play there). I wondered where on earth he was. Sounds like your having a blast Very Jealous! Big hugs form us.