Advertisement
Published: January 21st 2006
Edit Blog Post
Day 1 - Laguna Tonchek
The Lake we reached on the first day where the biting winds made us scurry to safety in the forest!! Hi guys,
Here´s what James and I got up to...
Day 1 - The first day saw about 8 seasons in one day, ranging from sunshine, to sleet, a bit of rain, snow, the odd blizzard, some bitter, bitter wind and a rainbow for good measure!!
We reached the end of the day´s walking, a place called Refugio Frey, located on a very scenic, but pretty much unsheltered glacial lake. The biting wind and snow storm that greeted us soon meant that me and James were scurrying half an hour back down the trail to a forest camping site that was mercifully sheltered from the wind.
The first night was a bit hairy as I discovered that my sleeping bag was rated at +16 C for comfort (i.e. only comfortable indoors!!!) and only down to +1 C for extreme survival. When the trusty 80 pence compass/thermometer hit -5 C I was a trifle worried. Nevertheless, combined with 4 layers of clothes, the wafer thin sleeping bag pulled me through. Just!!
Day 2 - Crawled out of the sleeping bag, which I had mummified myself in, to be greeted by blue skies and glorious sunshine, bizarre!!!
This
Day 1 - Mummified
The only way I could sleep in the nippy -5 conditions!! middle day was the toughest, with us tackling two snow-covered mountain passes, which involved a lot of stomping up steep snowy slopes, and some brilliant rock-hopping/climbing. It wasn´t all hard work though as we managed to fit in a good hour or so´s sunbathing on one of our "rest" breaks!! The top of the first pass was called the "Cancha de Futbol" and was a barren almost lunar landscape with towering rocky outcrops. This was really surprising given the lush vegetation that we had been travelling through before.
That night the temperature only went down to 0 C, so I was practically toasty!!!
Day 3 - James and I were up at 6a.m. to complete a side trip to the "Laguna Los Tempanos", a glacial lake half covered with ice and with almost sheer rock walls surrounding it on 3 sides. Being up so early we had the place completely to ourselves, which was superb.
It was another scorching hot day, so the final walk out through the midday heat was pretty sweltering. However, we were lucky enough to happen across the world´s most cunningly located bar about 500m from the main road that signified the end of the
Day 2 - Sunbathing
The weather picked up so it was only right to start sunbathing in the snow. (Alger Snr - note what a genuine big rock looks like!!!) trek. Naturally we partook is some of the man´s finest ice cold wares - it would be rude not to!!!
Overall, the trek was much tougher and far more spectacular than I expected. The extremes in weather made it quite testing and I think added to the fun (although I wasn´t thinking that when I was shivering uncontrollably on the first night!!)
We are now about to get on the longest bus journey I´ve taken on my travels: 27 down to a place called Rio Gallegos - and thats not even where we want to end up!! Our plan is to make it from there to El Calafate, where we will be visiting the Perito Moreno glacier.
Adios amigos.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.157s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 22; qc: 99; dbt: 0.0848s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb