Day 176 - here’s a toast to the end of the world

Well we’ve made it. We’re in Ushuaia - the most southerly town in the world (if you don’t count a few small outposts between here and the South Pole!). And its been a heck of a journey down here. Over 2,700 miles travelled which has meant a total of well over 75 hours on buses - most of which have been completed in stints in excess of 18 hours. That’s an immense amount of junk food and dreadful movies - even by my standards.

But actually we’ve become oddly accustomed to it and strangely the prospect of a whole day on the buses doesn’t fill me with dread anymore - we’ve had some stunning scenery along the way and managed to stop a few times en-route for a few days, to go for a bit of a wander and enjoy the different regions we’ve passed through on our way down here.

Being the second largest country in South America after Brazil, Argentina was always going to take some getting around. But if you have the time it’s actually a really interesting country to travel around by road. It has several distinctive regions - from the wine producing area of Mendoza in the high Andes where we headed first, the lakes, parks and almost Alpine villages around Bariloche further south, and below that the mountains and tundra of Patagonia and the wilds of the Tierra del Fuego at the bottom. And that’s not including the other regions we haven’t even seen yet.

So when last we spoke we were on our way to Mendoza, Argentina’s premier wine making region, to hit the booze and steaks for a couple of days (well they are considered one of Argentina’s main attractions!). Fortuitously it was here where we found a frustrated Clint and Noelia (who we met and travelled with in Bolivia) who were stuck in Mendoza waiting for a replacement passport and tickets having had a bag snatched in the bus station their first day there. Anyway despite their hassles with the bureaucracy of procuring new documents (amazingly they had more trouble from the airline than the consulate!) we managed to fill a few days in and around Mendoza doing our best to keep up morale - mostly by spending time drinking and eating. Actually if you’re going to have a passport stolen it’s probably not a bad place!

Anyhow a couple of days lazing in Mendoza resulted in two new additions to our group - Sarah (who we met horse-riding in Bolivia) headed over from Buenos Aries to join us and Marilyn (who James and I met very briefly his first night in Colombia) emailed and asked if we wanted to meet her to go trekking in Patagonia. So suddenly we were a group of 6 with a plan to head south. By bus.

First pit-stop after 18 hours was the winter playground of Bariloche. It’s a really famous South American ski resort when there’s snow but as we’re heading into the summer here now it’s transformed into a hiker’s paradise with a string of quaint Alpine-esque towns strung amongst the mountains and lakes bordering Chile. Time constraints meant we could only spend a day here (although I’m planning on heading back later) but we managed to stretch the legs with a beautiful walk out near the Llao Llao park on the lakeshore (someone told me that Disney modelled some of the scenery in Bambi on this area). And then, spotting a nice looking hotel, decided to finish up with a wee drink before heading back - of course it only turned out to be one of the very few Leading Hotels of the World in South America so I’m not sure I’m having much luck at returning to the backpacker style of travelling!

Anyhow it felt justified as, back on a bus, we had a marathon 35 hours without stopping - down to the town of El Calafate in the heart of Patagonia. This turned out to be a great place to stop for a couple of days as it’s a fairly busy touristy town on the edge of the Los Glaciers National Park. The park covers over 724,000 hectares and over 40% of it is ice fields which means it’s fairly inaccessible… the best way to see a selection of the glaciers was to take a day boat trip out onto Lago Argentino to cruise amongst the icebergs and visit a few of the 13 glaciers that descend from the ice field into the two lakes - so, doing our best to remember what information we could from those Geography lessons about moraines and glacial flow we joined the throng and spent a day on the water. The highlight of the park (and quite rightly its main attraction) was the mighty Perito Moreno Glacier which moves by up to 3m a day resulting in gigantic chunks of ice falling from its 60m high façade into the lake at regular intervals. We got up really early the following morning and made our way there before the crowds to spend some time on the walkways listening to the creaking, shattering ice and watching the display as ship-sized chunks of ice fell into the water. And then it was back on a bus (are you noticing a theme?) for a “blink-and-you’d miss-it” 5 hour journey just across the border to Puerto Natales in Chile to do some proper trekking.

As a town, Puerto Natales isn’t up to much - in all honesty as a tourist you’d never go near it unless you were heading into the Torres del Paine National Park. That being said we found ourselves a great little hostel (Patagonia Adventure) with some of the comfiest beds I’ve slept on in a long time (and I’ve slept on quite a few now!) and began working out exactly where, what, when and how we were going to trek. You have to stick to marked trails in Torres del Paine (which I guess thankfully meant we didn’t need to worry about compasses and getting lost too much) but there are over 250km of trails which means there’s quite a lot of choice. Basically most people opt either to do the 5 day “W” trek (named imaginatively because of the shape the route makes on a map) or continue on back over the top of the “W” and make it an 8 day round trip. We basically couldn’t decide so rented tents, gas stoves (heh things have moved on from the trangiers we used to get in Scotland - that makes me feel old!) and set off with enough food to do the full 8 days. Unfortunately poor Sarah had a stomach bug and Marilyn’s knees were playing up so we decided on day 2 that we were going to do the shorter one and so scoffed all the extra food. As it turns out the top part of the circuit, although more remote, apparently isn’t as scenic and due to a lot of snow and bad weather was still technically closed so we didn’t feel like we’d missed anything.

The trek itself was great - the scenery in Torres del Paine is absolutely breathtaking so that’s not an issue - what can be a problem is the weather which apart from hindering seeing the stunning scenery, can, within minutes, change and be a real danger - reducing a group of happy campers to shivering, miserable wrecks. Fortunately we’re heading into the summer season so although pretty cold at night, the days were mostly sunny and the only annoyance was the fairly strong wind which tended to make mincemeat of the useless tents we’d hired. Although they never actually collapsed they did come pretty close on several occasions which meant a few sleep-deprived nights… we seemed to fare better than some though and it was almost worth staying awake to hear the screams from some of the others in the campsite as, at 2am, yet another tent fell victim to the gales.

Anyway all in all I think we really all enjoyed the trekking - unlike at school this time James was regularly at the front of the group and I only ever saw him look at a hill and say “what’s the point?” once or twice!

So since Torres del Paine we’ve split up a bit - Clint and Noelia’s travels are at an end for the moment so they’ve headed off to Buenos Aries to fly back to life in New Zealand and Marilyn has headed to off to see the glaciers. The rest of us have, what a surprise, taken another 12 hour bus back into Argentina and are now in Ushuaia - a touristy yet very quaint town situated on the Beagle Channel next to the Tierra del Fuego National Park… we’re planning on a bit more hiking, maybe some sailing and then another marathon on the buses back up the coast to Buenos Aries to finally stop seeing scenery and soak up some culture. I’ll keep you posted how we go.



Argentina Slideshow

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