Trekking in Patagonia

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he last place I wrote about was Ushuaia, so after
that I took a 10 hour but to Punta Arenas in Chile -
on the way the whole bus got on a boat because we had
to cross a channel, and dolphins swam near us... Punta
Arenas is a very nice colonial city, with a surprising
amount of impressive old buildings for such a remote
part of the world. When I got there, I also had my
official welcoming to the ¨Israeliada¨ - until then I
barely travelled with Israelis, but since (besides now
in Bariloche) all of the ppl that I travelled with
were Israelis and half of the hostels I was in were
full of Israelis - we simply took over this part of
the world. I didn´t spend a lot of time in Punta
Arenas, we went to a pinguin reservation (there is an
island full of them over there, but we couldn't sail
because of bad weather, so we went to a smaller coast
reservation) - it was very nice, you could see them
from really close and some of them were right on the
trail. The next day I took the bus to Purto Natales, a
town that everybody come to just to go trekking on the
famous nearby Torres Del Paine Natural Park. I went to
a lecture about the trek and rented a tent there, and
finally found my 3 trekking partners in the
supermarket - 3 really good guys (Barak, Avi and Uri)
that had a really important part in me enjoying the
trek. So I met them after they already rented
equipment and were in the middle of buying food, so I
had my own stuff and we met at the entrance (with a
little luck, because we were on different buses) and
went together from there (BTW everything there ,
including the entrance is meant for tourists and
really over priced. you don't even have to bring a
tent and can sleep on a refugio there, but it will be
very expensive...). For the first day we didn´t have a
very good weather, we went up to the camp, set our
tent and made our way to the lookout over the torres -
e granite towers (see photos) that ppl come to see
from all over - so we climbed about an hour, it snowed
on us a little, and in the end we couldn´t see all of
them because it was cloudy (it is usually somewhat
cloudy), but climbing in the snow was an experience.
The torres suppose to be really nice with the sunrise,
but of course that we didn´t wake up at 4am for it
(the longest day in the year!), but we woke up in the
morning to clear ski, so we went up again and saw them
really well - nice, but I don't really get what all
the fuss is about. Then we started walking to the next
camp, and passed a couple of really beautiful lagoon.
Walking so much with the backpaks turned out to be
really difficult, and we only got to camp completely
exausted at about 9pm, in what was probably the
longest day in my life (almost 10 hours of light). The
next day we went to the lookout the the french valley,
but the weather struck again, it was completely
raining and cloudy, so we gave up before we got to the
highest lookout. We also didn´t move on to the next
camp, in order not to get completely wet with all of
our stuff, leaving a lot of walking to the last day,
and stayed in our tent and cooked. The last day we
woke up around 4am to have enough time to finish what
we wanted to do this day, luckily the sun smiled to
us, so we moved on to the next camp, left our stuff
there, and moved on light and happy to the (far away)
lookout to the Grey Glacier. Walking without the gear
and without steep climbs was such a relief for me and
I really enjoyed this day. I also saw a glacier for
the first time in my life, which was very cool, and
you could even touch pieces of ice that broke from it
and were close to the shore (see pictures...). After a
very long day of walking in which we made good time,
we got back with a ferry that was very expensive, but
we didn´t have a chice if we didn´t want to stay an
extra night. Unlike the others that rested, I at least
used the trip to take more pictures. Then I got back
to Puerto Natales, had a steak with the guys, and we
said our goodbyes. I stayed an extra day in town to
rest from the trek and do some arrangements.
Then I took the bus to Calafate - back in Argentina. I
spent one day sleeping because i didn't feel well, 1
day walking around town to do arrangements - the
weather was really nice and I could finally wear my
sandals again - and going to a birdwatching lagoon
that had nice views of the town and the area, and on
the 3rd day I fianally went to the reason why
everybody goes go this town - Perito Moreno Glacier.
I met in town a girl from Haifa (no, I didn´t know
her) that invited me to join her and her 2 friends in
renting a car to go to the glacier, and in the a
canadian guy joined too. We picked up the car in the
morning, and then I got to drive again (after doing
that in camp) another shitty car with manual gear -
this time in Argentina. We reached the park, and the
glacier is really impressive, every once in a while a
piece breaks of it and falls into the water. We spent
a few hours staring at it, and then came back to town.

The next day I met again Barak and Avi (from the
torres trek) in Calafate, we scheduled where to meet
in El Chalten, and I took an earlier bus to there. I
walked around El Chalten for a while - the weather
there is crazy, always very srong winds, and some rain
too. I met Barak and Avi again in the hostel, when I
was having my dinner (I cooked some of the lamb that
this area is famous of, Barak was very impressed😊,
and we decided to go the day after to the Fitz Roy
trek. In the morning we bought and rented the rest of
the equipment that we needed, and me and Avi also
booked a tour to walk on a glacier and scheduled to
meet them there - it was expensive, but we figured
that we will never get to do something like that
again... We headed to the camp near the lagoon that
under the glacier, and set our tents there. Then we
went on the way to the observation point over the
glacier, but we got back completely wet and without
reaching the point (we could still see it pretty well,
and me and Avi figured that tomorrow we will be ON the
glacier anyway). The next day me and Avi woke up
early, left Barak to sleep and headed to the camp
where the tour was suppose to start from. It is a camp
of companies - during the summer there are a bunch of
guides that actually live there in the middle of
nowhere, so it was pretty fancy with huge tents. We
met our guide, that turned out to be the guy that I
sat next to on the bus to El Chalten, and the rest of
our group, and went on the way. We walked for a couple
of hours, crossed the river with an 'omega', and then
finally reached the glacier. We put our special shoes,
the weather was finally nice, so we could really enjoy
the beauty of it. It was a very special experience
walking on this mass of ice, with all of its different
shapes, and we even got to climb a small wall of ice.
We came back to camp happy and ready to make use of
the weather and keep walking, to find Barak sleeping
and sick, so we stayed the night at the same camp. The
next day Barak felt a little better and we also didn't
really have a choice so we moved on the next camp and
left our stuff there. We had quite a lot to walk that
day, and saw a couple of really nice lagoons on the
way. Then we started to climb the the observation to
the Fitz Roy - again, a granite mountain (from the
bottom we could see it pretty much behind the clouds).
It was a very steep climb that left me breathless and
cursing, and in the end of it, where the Fitz Roy is
supposed to be, all we saw is a big cloud (again,
something quite usual), so we had to settle for the
view of the other side - a beautiful valley with
lagoons and mountains around it. 5 minutes after we
got to the top we ran into CRAZY winds, not that they
weren't srong before, but in order to get down we had
to make some of the way sitting down, because it was
simply impossible to try to walk against the wind. We
got back to El Chalten at night, just to find out that
our hostel didn't save any beds for us (even though
they wrote our reservation, they just ignored it),
that they moved the clock an hour forward so
everything is closed, and that all of the restaurants
serve only really expensive special 31/12 menus. In
the end we found another hostel and a restaurant that
agreed to serve us their usual (but still expensive)
menu, and went to sleep late completely exhausted. The
next day me and Barak said goodbye to Avi and just sat
in the hostel doing nothing and waiting to our 1am bus
to Chile (and all about Chile - in the next chapter).
Check out my photobucket - I uploaded a wholebunch of
new photos, and I also had to start a new album, so to
see my latest pics you will see in the right upper
corner of my account a link to ´south america 2´ album
- click on it (there are also new photos at my old
album)! To the ppl that don't save previous mails, the
adress is
http://s186.photobucket.com/albums/x151/roib/

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