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Published: February 14th 2007
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Sunset in Ushuaia
View from our hostel in Ushuaia Just north of nowhere...
"Nowhere" is a little non-specific, so let's just call it
Ushuaia. Obviously at the time that I came up with that heading, Ushuaia was not the place closest to my heart... but kinda like that annoying kid in school, the one that you just can't tell to "f*ck off" because they aint really hurting anybody, I have softened a little on Ushuaia... and anyway most of the time, that annoying little kid at school was me...
Calafate...
The road north to El Calafate was hardly recognisable from 40 thousand feet above it. One good thing that Ushuaia boasts is a half-decent airport, a facility that we took great pleasure in utilising after all of the recent bussing misadventure. Our cohorts included Andy, the unlucky melbournian, who had learnt nothing from his ealier decision to follow us to Ushuaia, and Jess, the baking beauty from Netherlands, whom we ran into in Ushuaia (Incidently, I found out that "The Netherlands" in spanish becomes
"Los Paises Bajos" which basically translates backwards to "the lower country" or "nether regions". This totally cracked me up, however when I tried to share this with Jessica, she didn't see why it should be
When I thought snow was cool
The novelty soon wore off... so funny, strangely enough. But then again, she's Dutch).
Calafate itself is a nice enough little town in Patagonia, Southern Argentina. Couldn't help but notice that most of the cabin-style hospedajes and hostels looked very new... like
built in the last week kinda new. When we arrived at the cabin that we were to stay in, we were quite impressed by it's outward appearance. However, the lack of hot water, lack of kitchen utensils, the presence of the technician installing the 'central heating', and the fact that the toilet was located
under the shower head, were fair indications that not alot of thought had been put into throwing the whole thing together as fast as possible. The two-burner camping stove that had been mounted into the wall at shoulder-height to serve as "the kitchen" also kinda gave it away. To be fair, it wasn't that uncomfortable, and we weren't there to sit in cabins all day in any case.
Mention here should be given to the friendly folks at
America Del Sur, the hostel that we first tried to stay in, which was fully booked. They ended up calling around town for us and finding lodgings for us
for the following three nights. Great help and they had a fantastic place, allowing us full use of their facil¡ties... if ever you go to El Calafate, book accoms with these guys:
www.americahostel.com.ar Now, possibly one of the most amazing things to see in this part of the world is the glaciars of
Los Glaciares Parque Nacional. The best glacier-oriented day we had was the tiouristy option - A boat tour of Lago Argentino, the largest of the Argentinian Lakes. Lago Argentino is fed by the melt of several glaciars within the National Park. Of these, during the tour we were able to get up close and personal with a few; Glaciar Onelli (including a picnic stop at Lago Onelli, a small upstream lake littered with small icebergs); Glaciar Upsala (the largest of the glaciars in the park - now this thing is amazing, having receded 50km in the last 50 years and still being spectacularly large); and Glaciar Spegazzini. Now even though Spegazzini sounds alot like a villian from Mario Bros, this one was without a doubt the most spectacular of the glaciars to see. 130-140m in height, in all it´s majesty. Unbelievable. Every now and then a
Iceberg
On the boat tour of Lago Argentino. Apparently the age of the ice is evident in the colour of the berg. For instance this white one was only a few thousand years old when it broke from the glaciar... huge chunk of ice falls from right at the top and everyone on the boat goes "Aaaaw!!" or "Ooooh!!" and points and gawks as it seems to slowly fall to the water below. Got to check out some massive icebergs that had broken away from the main glaciars also, that were slowly melting away in the lake. A little morbid, I got to thinking, that profit is made from the slow inevitable death of these monolithic ice rivers that have been around for millennia... but Heath assures me that it´s perfecty natural and that it´s probably happenned a million times before... so I´m a little comforted in knowing that much, and stop feeling bad about just wowing and taking photos like a proper tourist.
From El Calafate and Lago Argentina, we made our way to El Chalten, four hours north by road. The big spectacle in Chalten is
Cerro Fitz Roy, a spectacular rocky outcrop that sticks a kilometre higher out of the mountain on which it sits, with it´s peak at about 3000 metres. Now, alot of you, like I was at first, may be thinking of the Fitzroy Lions, and as obvious as the connection is made,
you´d be surprised how hard it is to explain to someone over here that "there used to be a team called the
Fitzroy Lions in the VFL, yeah, except now they´re the
Brisbane Lions... and it´s not the VFL, it´s the
AFL, which stands for... aah, forget it!! Nice rock." We ended up doing about 3 days worth of hiking in 10 hours at Cerro Fitz Roy, because we only had the one free day really. All beautiful and well worth the 50-cent coin sized blisters I scored on my heels, courtesy of my asics all-terrain mountain hiking sneakers. Buying new shoes pronto!
All in all, Calafate and Chalten were awesome, and collectively, we couldn´t help but feel a little rueful of the fact that we´d spent 4 days in good ol´ Ushuaia, sitting out a night, getting snowed on, and generally freezing our nuts off. Oh well! Nothing left to do but get back on a bus and tip the truck on out... Destination: Buenos Aires. Mode of transport: Bus. Approximate travel time: 50 hours (more or less). Ouch.
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Sarah
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Sensational snaps...
Jealous... And we thought that we had perfect days in Calafate and Chalten. Awesome photos = well done!! And particularly impressed with the informative literature that accompanies it. Sarah (and Brigitte)