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Published: September 25th 2008
Buenos Aires
Local graffiti from the same bloke that did our room!We liked the location and price of the hostel we stayed in last time so we booked back into the Art Hostel in San Telmo. Didn’t do too much again - Buenos Aires is an easy place to chill. We did manage to do some more sight seeing though and eat a lot more steak!
We went to Recoleta which is this graveyard, but no ordinary grave yard, it’s like a small city with massive tomb like buildings that house coffins of famous people (a bit of a morbid tourist attraction I know ) but everyone goes to see where Eva Peron (Evita) is buried - and it’s free! We killed more time buy shopping for gifts and hanging around different parts of the city. Finally, deciding that enough was enough we departed Buenos Aires and headed down into Patagonia. Firstly stopping at Puerto Madryn, and then down to El Calafate.
Puerto Madryn is on the east coast below Buenos Aires, it’s famous for its marine life; whales, penguins, orcas, sea lions etc. There isn’t much else to do there other than wildlife spotting. After taking some advice from other people in our hostel Steve wanted to go snorkelling with
Puerto Madryn
The life aquatic.. with Steve Zizzou. the sea lions and the dive company taking them out were also combining it with a whale watching trip. We saw loads of Southern Right Whales, the one with the up turned mouth and barnacles living on its face. There are literally hundreds of them this time of year as they come here to breed, so the males are very active playing around in the water. They are MASSIVE creatures, at least twice as big as the boat we were on. It’s also possible to see them from just standing on the beach, jumping right out of the water and sticking their tales in the air (Unfortunately not when we had the camera out though). We took as many photos we could we headed on round to a bay where ‘Scuba Steve’ went snorkelling with the sea lions. There was a huge beach full of sea lions shouting and laying around in the sun. One of the dive masters swam up close to shore and started splashing around, after a few seconds nearly all the sea lions were in the water swimming around all the divers. They were really inquisitive and friendly. Steve said it was a very strange, but
Perito Moreno Glacier
After a long hike over mountains and through snow we finally arrived at the awesome Perito Moreno glacier fun experience. He got a DVD filmed of the day too.
From Puerto Madryn we headed further south into Patagonia to a town called El Calafate. The main reason for visiting is to see the awesome Perito Moreno Glacier. The glacier is 5 km wide, and about 60m above the surface of the water. It grows up to 2m per day but as it grows it loses a similar amount of ice off the front so it basically stays the same. We left early one morning to see it and it was absolutely freezing before the sun comes up, because it is winter here the sun doesn’t rise until about 9am. The day was beautifully sunny (which is rare at this time of year) so we got great photos. It was truly amazing to see and hear because the ice is always breaking up and huge chunks are falling off too. We didn’t see the all important drop of ice from the front of the glacier, but did hear a few that must of happened further back. It was a scary sound!
The hostel we had booked into was brilliant though, private rooms with ensuite bathrooms and a
El Calafate
The pup that lived in our hostel heated floor throughout. There was an adopted puppy, which Kelly named Harry Potter - look at the picture. Anyway, being that the hostel was so cosy we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave most of the time but we did get out occasionally. Kelly did manage to ice skate on the lake which was frozen, I couldn’t because they didn’t have skates left in my size.. gutted.
After a few days we mustered up the enthusiasm to visit El Chalten, a few hours north, to catch a glimpse of the Fitz Roy Massif in the Park National los Glaciers. The night before it had snowed quite heavily, so totally un-prepared we arrived for a day of hiking through the snow in non-waterproof shoes. First stop was yes - another waterfall, although this time partially frozen. We hung around long enough to eat our lunch but were in a hurry to hike up to the Fitz Roy view point and back before our bus was due to leave. A couple of people had joined us by this point as they were on their own, it took almost 2 hours to hike up through the wind and snow, up steep slopes and
El Chalten
The Fitz Roy Massif. When we arrived the clouds came in, so here is an artists impression. traverses across the mountain to the view point - It was like the Lord of the Rings at some points. When we finally reached the top it the clouds had come in so thick that we couldn’t see a thing. So we’ve adjusted the picture to show you how it would of looked! It only took 40 minutes to get down and back to the bar to grab a drink and try and dry our socks out before heading back. The bus driver, as they usually do, stopped at his mates restaurant so that we could purchase hot drinks and snacks. This one was worth the stop though as they had a pet baby llama who lived there and kept sneaking indoors to warm himself by the fire as the door was opened, smart llama.
We spent another night in El Calafate and headed or tried to head up to Bariloche to get some snowboarding in. We’d heard that the snow was coming down thick and fast. Bariloche is the oldest ski resort in the Argentinian ‘lake district’, it is quite a pretty town famed for it’s chocolate. It took us 3 days to get there because the road
Bariloche
We got the better part of the season. was closed due to a heavy snow storm. We left our hostel at 3am for a 4 hour bus journey to the main terminal in Rio Gallegos (the southern most point we got to in South America - pretty much the closest thing to Antartica), then an hour wait before a 19 hour bus journey to Comodoro Rivadavia in time to get out connection to Bariloche. Unfortunately when we arrived we were told that the road was closed and they didn’t know when it was going to open again. They just told us ‘sorry come back at 2.30 tomorrow afternoon‘ . So we were stuck in a town, which pretty much exists as a transit hub, over night. Anyway the bus didn’t go the next day so we changed our tickets to take a much longer route where the roads were open and finally arrived in Bariloche at 3pm - 3 days after we left. Needless to say the novelty of the Argentinian buses has well and truly warn off.
It was worth it in the end as we enjoyed the best snow that the resort has seen so far all season. We had three days riding the mountain and
Mendoza
Our wine tour was done on bikes. A wise idea. it was sweet. Rental gear was rubbish though! After getting our fill of snow we jumped on another bus up to Mendoza the famous wine region of Argentina. We arrived and wanted to do a few wine tours then book a bus over the boarder into Santiago, Chile. We met up with another couple and hired some bikes and cycled around the wine region. Took in a few bagodas, the main wine was Malbec (and very nice too) we also stopped in an olive oil factory. We had a rather pleasant day!
The next day we tried to leave Mendoza, but there was a problem with the boarder over into Chile. It was impassable (again due to heavy snow). We ended up having to hang around for 4 days before they could clear the pass and we could leave. Needless to say we were pretty bored by that point. The crossing took ages as everyone was trying to get through, but we could see the extent of the snow fall when we went across. The road had been cleared, at some points the sides of the road had walls of snow about 15 feet high!
Eventually we made it
Valle Nevado - Chile
With our buddies from the hostel. A good days boarding. to Santiago and checked into large hostel. Because we were held up in Mendoza for so long we only had a few days to see the sights. We walked around town on the first day and took in the sights of the city, nothing too interesting but the surrounding mountains were cool to see against the city. We met a load of people in our hostel and went out around town with them, one day we convinced a couple to come snowboarding with us at the local resort. We got picked up early and made our way up the mountain to Valle Nevado ski resort. Again the snow was incredibly deep, the road had to be cut out to make it up the mountain. But we eventually arrived at about 11am! After arguing about getting our ‘rubbish’ rental gear we finally got out on to the slopes. Although not big by European standards the resort was pretty big. The snow conditions were fantastic and the sun shone all day. We all had a great time and were whisked back down the mountain back to our hostel. Another packed in day.
On our last day we headed back into town
Santiago
Lunch in the fishmarket. to a local fish market everyone one in our hostel was talking about. There was this huge Victorian building (a bit like London’s spitalfields market) that housed huge amounts of sea food sellers, everything was there and most of it still alive on the tables. We walked around being harassed (and I mean harassed, it was embarrassing) by every fish shop owner to come into his restaurant because he’s was apparently ‘the best restaurant here, much better than the others you’ve seen’. Eventually we stopped at one as the bloke working there was very informative, the building we were in was in fact Victorian, it was made in Birmingham and shipped over to Santiago (their third oldest building!). We stopped and ate some seafood chowder, and it was very nice too.
Later that night we went out for our final steak along with our buddies we’d met in our hostel. We had to rush to the restaurant order our food because it was a last minute decision to actually go out. We ordered before everyone else, ate it as fast as possible then legged it to catch our taxi that was waiting for us to take us to the
Santiago
A view over the city with the Andes behind. airport. We did managed to make it on time - just!!
So, after using the lounge for a bit at Santiago airport (thanks BA) we flew off to New Zealand...
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Caz
non-member comment
Finally got the internet in scotlaand so I can start looking at ur pics again now! They look amazing, did the sealions look like The Pig?! x