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Published: March 28th 2009
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Abajo he escrito en espanol si no puedes entender ingles!
I am currently in El Calafate close to Parque Nacional Los Glaciares in the south of Argentina almost two weeks into my trip, but I will start at the beginning.
Last Monday (16th of March) I met the people I would be spending the next 5 weeks with on my tour from Buenos Aires to Santiago for a preliminary meeting, but we didn't actually leave Buenos Aires until the Wednesday. The tour is with a British tour company called Dragoman (here is a link to my trip
Dragoman ) and there are 22 people on the tour with a Guide/Driver and a Co-Guide/Driver. We are mainly British but there are also two people from France, one from Belgium, one from Croatia and one from Ireland. Our ages range from 18 to 59 and I think that the average age is about 30. We are travelling on an Overland truck and will be mainly camping each night, with the occassional stay in a hostel.
We left Buenos Aires last Wednesday and commenced the long drive south, driving for days through large expanses of flatness as far as the eye could
see, first of all rich farming land and then semi-arid desert which was still farming land but made up of very large cattle and sheep stations.
Our first stop of interest was to visit the Valdez Peninsula, a penisula of more semi-arid land and sheep stations but with an amazing coastline supporting many different types of wildlife and a World Heritage Site
Valdez . I am still getting used to distances in South America and the peninsula doesn't look too big on the map but is actually something like 4,000 square kilometres and took a while to drive across! Our first stop was to see some Sea Lions who were basking in the sun and occassionally getting into the water and swimming. It struck me that there life is not too disimilar to what somebody would do on a beach holiday - sunbathing and swimming! The sound that they made sounded a little like sheep ´baa-ing´, just a little deeper!
Later that day (after a stop for an hour to 'dig´ the truck out of some soft stones at the side of the dirt road! We also got stuck in sand on a beach road a few days earlier!)
we went further north in the peninsula hoping to be able to see Orcas (Killer Whales) in only the second place in the world where they have adapted so that they can beach themselves briefly to catch a baby or female seal. I was lucky enough to see the fins of orcas in the water eyeing up their prey on the beach, was not lucky enough to see them beach themselves (photographers can wait days to try to get a picture, in fact there were photographers from the Discovery Channel on the beach with their cameras at the time).
From the Valdez Peninsula we commenced two days of long driving but stopped off at a reserve to see Magellanic Penguins. There were hundreds of them there, not concerned in the slightest at the tourist walking past them. They were absolutely adorable and even more so with their occassional sneezes!
We spent 3 days in the northern part of Parque Nacional Los Glaciares and I did two day walks visiting some Lakes and glaciares and after that we moved to the southern part of the Park. Today I visited Glacier Perito Moreno, one of the few glaciers in the
world to be expanding - by two metres a day (although as much snow/ice falls off at the moment so it is not actually growing). It was absolutely incredible, a wall of ice rising up to 60 metres above the level of the lake (and apparently going down 160 metres to the bottom) and stretching 30km back up to the Andes. It was raining which meant that instead of being a glaring white mass of snow/ice it gave off a lovely blue colour, which is just about possible to pick up in the photos. Occassionally a piece of ice would fall into the lake below, even what looked like a small piece giving a thundering roar as it hit the water.
Tomorrow we head into Chile for a few days of walking and hopefully I will be able to write an update next week.
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Quiero escribir de mis viajes en español pero esta mas despacio escribir en español que ingles y entonces este es un pocito diferente a la versión en ingles!
Estoy disfrutando mucho mis viajes y esta una semana y media que salí Buenos Aires, con tres semanas mas hasta llego a Santiago de
Peninsula Valdes
Peninsula Valdes Chile.
El viaje es por bus con 22 personas y dos guías. La mayoría de las personas son de reino unido y tenemos edades de 18 anos a 59 anos y pienso que el promedio edad es alrededor 30 anos. Muchas noches nos quedemos en tiendas de campana pero algunas veces en hostales.
El viaje comenzó el pasado lunes con una reunión entre los pasajeros y las guías pero no salimos de Buenos Aires hasta miércoles. Me quede siete días en total en Buenos Aires y me gusto mucho porque hay mucho ver y hacer. El acento de Argentina es muy diferente a Guatemala y es un pocito difícil entender pero es posible cuando la persona habla despacio conmigo.
Estamos viajando por 9 mil kilómetros en total y en la primera semana había muchos horas conduciendo en el bus por una tierra muy plana pero ahora hay menos conduciendo y mas tiempo para ver y hacer cosas.
El primer lugar donde paramos fue Península Valdes y vi lobos de marino y (las altas) de orcas (ballenas). La península es solo un de dos lugares en todo el mundo donde las orcas han adaptado para que puedan
desembarcar muy rápido en la playa para coger focas. Desafortunado no tuvo suerte para ver este.
El próximo día visitamos una reserva donde vimos pingüinos y no les molesto que estuviéramos allí.
Después de dos días mas de conducir llegamos a nuestro próximo lugar - El Parque de Los Glaciares - donde camine por dos días a diferentes lagos.
Hoy visitamos el ser del parque, específico para ver un glaciar muy grande. Al lago el glaciar tiene 60 metros de altura, con 5 kilómetros de ancho y 30 kilómetros de largo.
Mañana vamos a Chile para caminar por 4 días.
Por favor dígame si mi gramática esta mal y donde para que pueda mejorar!
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