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Published: February 6th 2007
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Back in Buenos Aires, I met up with my Swiss trekking buddy Tobias (who I befriended in Bolivia while studying Spanish). Tobias and I headed for the best bike shop we could find (Panaglia Bikes) where the friendly and helpful Carlos Soto set us up with two steel-framed mountain bikes, racks, and panniers. We headed south by bus to Rio Gallegos in deepest Patagonia, with a plan emerging enroute to bike to Torres del Paine in Chile for some trekking, then recross into Argentina, biking up Ruta 40 to El Calafate and onto El Chalten for more trekking at Los Glaciares NP (
see map).
Our on-the-go trip prep went pretty smoothly with only a few minor snafus. One was trying but failing repeatedly to get any Chilean currency before we arrived at the rudimentary Cerro Castillo border services. Later, Tobias´ ever-prepared Swiss army training saved the day. He revealed to me his secret stash of US currency which kept us out of the red during our week-long, horribly-overpriced Torres del Paine NP visit.
We started off by bike from La Esperanza into some vicious headwinds, making it just 5 km in 55 minutes to Estancia Chali Aike, where the generous
Sanchez family offered us hot tea, toast, homemade jams, and a warm, wind-free sleep space. We graciously accepted! They gave us a quick tour and photo show of their sheep estancia. And we shared a good laugh at our first-day´s defeat after only 5 km - with a thousand or more ahead of us! In truth, we were as frazzled by irregular sleep and eating on the 36+ hours of bus travel from BA as we were from the supernatural wind demons.
Over the next few days we gradually upped our mileage, bending our bodies to this new chosen form of transport, slowing the pace of our travel, and adjusting our souls to life on two wheels. Across vast, empty, and wind-swept road stretches we entertained ourselves with heady laughs at passing busses stuffed (like sausages!) with fat lazy tourists, and with inventing new ways to escape the everpresent wind.
Reaching Torres del Paine with sore, callused butts, we stashed our bikes and headed out on a 101 km circuit of the Paine massif. Torres del Paine NP is very busy in January: it is the Chilean and Argentinian holiday period and there are lots of gringos, too.
With limited funds for rather expensive entry and camping fees, we completed the circuit in just 5 days - a rather aggressive schedule considering the poor, wet trail conditions we encountered. Our feet protested loudly, so we gave them a day´s rest at Las Torres where we splurged on a pricey, all-you-can-eat buffet.
Then we hopped back on our bikes for a day-and-half of more biking, making it 134 km (most of the way to El Calafate) before we were again defeated by the wind demons, as well as depleted stocks of food and stove fuel. So we flagged down a one of the passing four-wheeled sausages for the final 90 km. Sometimes one cannot be too proud...
In Calafate we restocked our supplies and made some bike adjustments. Even the short stretches of rough ripio (gravel) roads we have encountered so far have taken their toll on our equipment. We are confident about our bikes (only $300 USD each), less so about the racks and bags. But we have kept the amount of gear down, to keep the weight down. None of our equipment is color-coordinated; our bike bags are not the popular and overpriced Ortleib waterproof
ones (that everyone else has!); we lack a cyclometer; and don´t have a single piece of lycra clothing between us. I can see the sneers on the other touring cyclists as they pass. We are poseurs, upstarts, and raggamuffins, they think to themselves. As Tobias is fond of saying, we are ¨urchig¨ - Swiss German slang for something gritty, unpolished, and earthy.
With more wind in the forecast we opted for a bus ride to El Chalten, and were glad with this decision enroute as the bus swerved to and fro across the road from powerful gusts. Next we did a 3.5 day loop around Cerro Huemul in Los Glaciares NP, passing up the Rio Tunel drainage, across the toe of Glacier Tunel, and over the well-named Paso del Viento. Then we walked down along the margin of the stunning Glacier Viedma to Lago Viedma and back to El Chalten. We passed 10-story-high lateral moraines, and were dumbfounded with the immensity of Glacier Viedma which seemed to stretch to the horizon. In a small refugio where we escaped a night of rain, we studied maps that showed Glacier Viedma and Glacier Grey (in Torres del Paine) as but tiny
fingers or ¨pour points¨ for the vast 400 km-long Southern Patagonian Icefield (clearly visible in Google Earth satellite maps).
Gusts off the icefied nearly mowed us down on several occasions, and at our camp on Lago Viedma the violence of the wind literally blew water off the surface of the lake in maelstroms of spray that soaked our clothes.
My arrival in Patagonia has coincided with lots of big news in various friends´ lives up north - most of it very positive. Between the news and the power and beauty of the landscape, I have been stuck in a kind of melancholy self-reflective mood of late. Ever since the start of my journey in Peru in September, I have been chasing the Austral spring southwards. Now both spring and the half-way point in my journey have past, and it is time to turn back north. I am thinking more and more of my return, and what will follow.
Love and peace with you all.
Credits: All the cool photos here are by Tobias.
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lindsay
non-member comment
Wow!
Just think: you will never be this free, this fit, or this young again. Your photos are spectacular; you could get a travel outfit to pay you for a slide show. Serious. Best regards and love from Oregon.