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Published: October 12th 2007
Shells!
The first shot of the beach!Hey everyone! So I´m back from Patagonia and I know no other way to explain everything except to write a looong entry detailing everyday. So I hope it´s enjoyable...
Day 1: Puerto Madryn
So Katie, Danielle, and I woke up bright and early Saturday morning to catch our 5:30am flight to Puerto Madryn. The domestic airport in BA was a breeze! Nothing like anything in the US... no crazy security or men with semi-automatic weapons. I even got to keep my shoes on! Anyway, we arrived in Puerto Madryn a little after 7am... and it was HOT! I mean 90 degrees hot! So what do 3 girls who haven´t seen sunshine in months do? Check into the hostel and head straight to the beach of course! So off we went in jeans and hiking boots to the coast, a whopping 3 blocks from our hostel. Right away we spotted the whales! You could see them swimming from the coast. Amazing! (be prepared to read that word a alot) We walked along the beach to a cliff where we saw a whale swim right below and also a sealion! We walked back after a few hours and stopped at a
Sand
Sand dune in Pto. Madryn! restraunt to have lunch and discovered we were BURNED. We never thought to put on sunscreen... oops. We sat outside (after a long wait for a table on the patio) and watched the kids play soccer and the whales play whatever games they were playing so close to shore. We bought an ice cream and walked on the beach... total paradise. We went back to the hostel and planned our trip for the next day and then watched the sunset on the beach. What a great start!
Day 2: Puerto Madryn
We woke up early to catch the bus to start our first huge excursion. An all-day animal extravaganza! My dream come true! It began with a long drive onto the pennisula where the wildlife migrates to from all over (the south atlantic and Brazil). Our first stop was to see the whales from the coast. Totally breathtaking to see them so close to shore. We headed out to the elephant seal colony next. Along the way there was NOTHING... well nothing but sheep. Sheeps wool and tourism provided most of the money for patagonia. The elephant seals were totally cool! So big and lazy. They way tons
Pto. Madryn
Me and a rock! (literally) and just lay in the sun all day throwing rocks and sand onto their bodies to stay cool. The babies were too cute! (The pictures explain everything a bit better so I dont really feel like I need to detail this too much hehe) Next it was off to the penguins! These penguins never see ice or snow... they migrate between the peninsula and Brazil...smart birds! They are just too cute and have no fear of people. They sat literally inches from us and posed for our cameras! Finally (after hours of driving) we arrived at the cove with the boat that would take us to the whales. We were towed out of the shallow water by a tractor!! I can´t describe what it was like to be so close to these huge animals. We saw tons of them. A mom and a baby, some bacholers waiting for a mate, and this is is the ONLY place on earth to see Right whales in groups, they usually dont travel together except to mate. It was spectacular. Worth every peso...That night we met up with a bunch of europeans who we actually ran into frequently on the trip. They were
Champion!
Edge of the cliffs in Pto. Madryn. Below me is where we saw the whales and seal! doing a round the world trip over the course of year and it was incredible to hear there stories. Hostels are great places to meet amazing people... Our hostel was awesome; run by sweet very helpful people and very cozy and home like. The breakfast was toast and jam and dulce de leche... which we quickly learned was the staple at every hostel.
Day 3: El Calafate
We hopped on our next flight to El Calafate... On the other side of Argentina near the Andes. The airport was in the best location EVER. (Although the rainforest landing in Costa Rica rivals it...) Surrounded by snow-capped mountains (the first I´ve ever seen!) we took the bus into town. Our hostel had HUGE windows with a view of the bright blue lake, made of glacial run off, and mountains. The floor of the hostel was heated so you could run around with your socks on and it was wonderful! Anyway... the town was small but had everything we needed. We decided that after we spent SO much money we should start grocery shopping and cooking instead of eating out. So we hit up the store and bought pasta and granola
(our staples for most of the trip). We hung out around town for the rest of the day and prepped for the trip the next day...
Day 4: El Calafate
Off to the glaciar! We hopped on a bus that drove us the 1 and half hours to the Perito Moreno glacier. El Calafate has over 100 glaciars around it and this is the one that is most accessible and 2nd largest. We stopped along the way to see the beautiful lake and mountains before arriving infront of the most amazing thing Ive ever seen... the glacier. Its sheer size (which the pictures do no justice) was incredible. It was over 10k across and 50m high. We took a boat out to it through the iceberg laden water. As it got closer it only became more impressive. After tons of pictures and a brief explanation of glacial history we strapped on our spikes to walk on the ice and marched onto the glacier. All of this with assitance from our wonderful guides of course! We walked on the glacier for over 2 hours stopping for pictures all along the way. It was truly amazing to be on that
Mountain view
This is the view from our hostel in El Calafate thing! Whoa. (Again words cant do it justice... check out the pictures) After the trek we had lunch staring out at the mountains and glacier. This is a rareity... all other glaciers are found up in the mountains at high altitudes so it is special to see the green of the trees and the blue of the glacier right next to eachother. I felt like I was staring at a National Geographic cover the entire time (in fact I felt this way the entire trip haha). We hopped back on the boat and headed to the viewing platforms from where you could see the glacier from above and thats where I first grasped the shear size of this thing. This glacier actually hasnt changed since 1910 but many others are shrinking due to global climate change. Hopefully people will get it together and help save these glaciers (and the whales too!). Anyway, it was probably the coolest thing I´ve ever done.
Days 5 and 6: El Chalten
We took a bus the 1.5 hours from El Calafate to El Chalten, another little town on the Andes. We had planned to do alot of hiking buuut the weather made
Beach in Pto. Madryn
View from the resteraunt deck us change that plan. We spent the 1st day there sitting around the hostel (which had a HUGE pyrennes/ St bernard dog that I wanted to cuddle with!). We hiked to the store in the freezing rain to find a teeny tiny place that didnt even sell cereal! So we bought salami and some bread (the same bread that the hostels use to make toast and the same bread we had been eating for day... I never want to see a baguette again). Lemme tell ya that was the best salami I´d ever had! Day 2 we awoke to snow... lots of snow! We decided to hike anyway. We headed up for a 2 hour hike up the mountain. It was beautiful! About 8 inches of snow (thanks to my gor-tex boots my feet were dry and warm!) and beautiful trees surrounded us. It was great until we reached the top and the path and been covered by snow so we turned back. We got back and met up with our German friend and set out on another hike. It was great until we reached the top and it started to POUR. We got back to the hostel, took a
Thank God theyre Gore-tex
Our wonderful boots in the ocean! hot shower, and retreated early back to El Calafate.
Day 7 and 8: Bariloche
The next day we flew from El Calafate to Bariloche. Bariloche is a fancy city where people head to ski. We weren´t skiing (although Danielle who comes from Oregon and goes to school in Colorado would have loved to) but we did have a lovely time relaxing in our hostel, which provided both breakfast and dinner, and staring out at the lakes and mountains. We took a horseback ride up into the mountains on the 2nd day in Bariloche and I loved it. Katie, who hates horses but whose idea it was to take the ride, got kicked in the foot by someone elses horse but was a trooper and walked it off... firmly stating she would NEVER get back on one of those animals again. Bariloche´s city center was very touristy, with people paying to take pictures with St. Bernard puppies and adults with barrels around their necks... cute but silly. We did eat an awesome resteraunt (which Lonely Planet, our Bible, suggested) we had milanesa (an Argentine favorite... its a thin thin steak that is breaded and fried... sometimes its on a
Sunset
Sun setting in Pto. Madryn. sandwich sometimes it has ham on it... its really a diverse food! hehe) that was the size of 2 plates and that was half portion! We also watched the sunset over the mountains... awesome! Oh! The chocolate! How could I possibly forget! Bariloche is famous for its chocolate and the shops were EVERYWHERE. They were huge! I mean taking up entire corners! We got a chocolare mousse cake and hot chocolate (which was more like straight melted chocolate) and enjoyed it emensly! I wish my mom and Donna could´ve been there!! You guys would have loved it!! Bariloche was mostly out place to take a rest from hitting the ground running every morning.
Day 9 and 10: Villa de La Angostura
What to say about sleepy little La Angostura... It too was beautiful and surrounded by lakes and snow-capped mountains. It was only an hour from Bariloche and a world of difference. Our first day was spent exploring the little town and taking a 6k hike to a little green lake. The next day we woke up early, had our bread breakfast (by this point we bought our own yogurt to supplement the bread), and headed out to
Oh Argentina!
The hot sun shining... the national forest on the peninsula. On our walk to the park entrence we picked up a stray dog (whom Katie named Frank) who stuck with us the entire hike and back to the hostel. Anyway, we hike 12k in the park which has amazing views and GREAT trees. Some looked like broccoli! There is a tree found only in that forest which has spots which resemble those found on a baby deer. Walt Disney saw these trees and they actually inspired him to write Bambi! Pretty cool eh? Parts of the hike were pretty steep and all in all it took us 4 or 5 hours with a pit stop for lunch. We didn´t see much wildlife except for the "wild cows" (as Danielle called the cows which someone was allowing to graze in the forest). The scenery was just absolutely breathtaking. We returned tired and sore to our hostel and made our pasta lunch and chilled on the couch the rest of the day. The hostel was relatively empty except for us, our roommate (who was super cool!), a guy from New Zealand, and 3 guys from the states who had just graduated high school and took the
Sunset
Just wonderful... year off to travel South America (crazy, I know). The hostel owners friends made up the majority of people there and they were a blast to hang out with. They even invited us to a pizza party they were having that night. They actually HAND MADE pizza! It was delicious! Even the wierd kinds... egg, olive, and onion was my favorite! It was a great final night....
Day 11: Back to BA
We pakced up for the last time and headed back to Bariloche. We had one last chocolate indulgance (I actually didnt get any chocolate I had a sandwich...) and got ice cream and hit the ATM one more time in order to pay for a cab rides. The place we got ice cream shouldn´t have existed on earth. It was a gigantic shop that sold ice cream on one side, chocolates on one side, cookies, alfajores, and cakes throughout, and boxes to go incase you couldn´t get enough while visiting. We got to the airport went through the ever so easy security and arrived to rain in BA. The weather felt bad for us too...
So everyone out there, that was our adventure! Being
Whales from the shore
This is how close they were! Incredible! back in BA isn´t terrible and I look forward to the travels to come. The fresh air was wonderful and it was nice to come home to my host family who was excited to see me! Even baby Joaquin wanted me to hold him non stop! School is going well (except for the flaky professors..grrrr) and my mid-terms went well too. This weekend Katie and I are going with her host sister (and 600 others) to a town outside of BA to build houses... think Habitat for Humanity.
I hope you all enjoy the pictures... it takes a while to load them onto this site so Im working on getting all of them uploaded to another site. I miss you all tons!
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