Advertisement
Published: January 24th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Having successfully made good progress through a few bottles of wine here in argentinian wine country it´s time to move on again. And in under 7 hours time we´ll be starting our last bus journey of our 7 month trip. This one a mere hop at 13 hours or so. Although it will be nice not to have to call a bus seat a bed again, it does mean our fantastic trip is coming to a close (sniff sniff).
In the last couple of weeks we´ve made our way all the way down and back up this huge country. From Puerto Madryn (of "diving with sealions fame") we hopped on a bus to Rio Gallegos (a mere 20 hours). Once here we had a choice of heading to the deep south, into Chile or glacier country. Our decision was sort of made for us as when we pulled up a bus was 15 mins from leaving for El Calafate (glacier country). Taking this as a sign and with not really the time to go south or into Chile and get the most of it, we opted to leave Rio Gallegos straight away (we haven´t had any favourable reports of the
place as yet!) and get on the bus to El Calafate - after 20 hours what´s another 5?!!
As we´d opted not to hit the impressively reviewed Torres del Paine national park in Chile (I have to say the recommended 3/4 days trekking hadn´t really sold it either) we opted instead for a 2 day trek in the Fitz Roy range near El Chalten in the northern part of the Glacier National Park. This did involve 2 more 4 hour bus journeys to get there and back but it was worth it. Choosing to do an organised trek meant that all camping equipment and food was sorted out for us (I like to call it easy trekking). However the first day we wondered what we´d let ourselves in for, as the Patagonian weather decided to show us what the definition of "unpredictable" is. The 5 hour trek was accompanied by a howling wind, rain, mist and then sleet and hail - did no one tell them it was the middle of summer? At night it was freezing too and we certainly needed the 2 minus 5 sleeping bags we´d been provided with! There was definitely a bit of "this
was your idea not mine" being said by me in the tent that night!
But what a difference a day makes... we woke up to clear blue skies and a stunning sunrise (yep we were up at 5.45) over the 3 peaks of the Fitz Roy range. We made our way up to the Torres glacier, skirting the lake and crossing the river by zip line! Here we donned crampons and ice-trekked for 2/3 hours over the less than flat glacier. We then had a go at a bit of ice climbing and while Sarah wasn´t busy losing her shoes half way up the ice wall, it was all good fun. All that was left was the trek back to the town - reached at about 5.30. Really good trip, with some stunning scenery (had the weather been worse i think our summary may have been a bit different however!)
While in El Calafate we also headed to the Perito Moreno glacier about 75 kms away. This is a hugely impressive river of ice - 30kms long, 5kms wide, up to 70m high above the water (20 storeys apparently) and over 140m below it (guess who was being
Half a Cow
Steak - Argentinian style tour swot). This huge glacier´s sheer face stops abruptly in Lake Argentina and is possible to see by boat or a headland 500m away. The glacier "flows" at 2m per day and as it does huge pieces of ice fall with a bang into the water - small pieces like rifle shots the big like thunder. If you can stomach the hordes of tourists (particularly at this time of year), it´s very funky indeed.
Our next stop was to be Bariloche which is , you´ve guessed it, miles away! We opted to take a 2 day bus trip, with an overnight stop in a hostel, up the route 40. We´d read the 40 was supposed to be like the final frontier (it´s not paved on this section), as it winds its bumpy way through South Patagonia. After an hour though the novelty wears off - you´ve seen what South Patagonia has to offer, miles and miles of dry scrubland. So instead it was more a 28 hour, slightly bumpy, warm (no investment in air con for this route) and pretty uncomfortable bus journey north. Only the last hour or 2 as we started to hit the Lake District did
the scenery improve as we approached the city of Bariloche which is where I hand over to Miss Beddoes.....
Well as it´s nearly the end of our trip and I have only written once I decided it is high time I write some more! Bariloche is a pretty town in the middle of the Argentine Lake District renowned for its beautiful scenery, multitude of activities, and its partying. We spent 4 days there and thoroughly enjoyed it. We took full advantage of the partying the first night by going to a bar/club with a couple we met on the bus from El Calafate and in true Argetinian style the place only started to get busy at about 1am and was busiest when we left at 4! Luckily we didn´t have an early start the next day to go horseriding. We did a 2 hour ride around one of the nearby lakes. A relaxing ride in pretty surroundings. I think my horse was a bit hormonal though as she kept trying to bite Jonny´s horse if he went too close! We went kayaking on this same lake the day after and this was a bit more professional than any kayaking
Perito Moreno Glacier
Photos don´t really do this glacier justice... but here´s another anyway we had done before. There were pedals to steer and we were even given apron things to stop the water getting in. None of the "here´s a boat off you go" like in Vietnam!
From Bariloche we had another 17 hour bus journey to get to Mendoza and wine country. After tonight´s journey we´ll be up to 149 hours on a bus. This is equivalent to over 6 full days on a bus! We´ve been staying in a really friendly hostel and the only criticism I have of it is being woken up at 5am the first night by some people deciding to have a sing-song outside our room!
With Mendoza being in wine country you can´t really not go on a wine tour can you?! So on Monday we spent half a day visiting two nearby wineries. At each one, apart from obviously tasting the wine, we were given a tour of the winery and an explanation of how the wine is produced. This was really interesting as at all of the other wineries we have visited on our trip all we have been able to do is taste the wine (not that there was anything wrong
Lake District
Nahuel Huapi Lake, Bariloche with that!) We bought a bottle of wine (very cheap!) from one of the wineries and drank it in the garden of the hostel before heading out that night. One of the funniest nights out so far as we ended up in a slightly gay bar/club which I´d dragged Jonny to and halfway through the night there was a drag show! There were 5 or so men (we think they were still pre-op!) who were very convincingly dressed as women who came out to dance on the stage. Very funny.
Tonight we´re heading back to Buenos Aires for 5 days before hopefully flying home. I say hopefully as our flight home is with good old British Airways slap bang in the middle of the 3 day strike next week! Ironic that we have flown all over the world with some weird and wonderful airlines and only with British Airways do we have a problem!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.103s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 10; qc: 61; dbt: 0.0731s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb