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Published: February 2nd 2010
Meet the Trekkers: The Climber
'yep, just checked another peak off the list...'The New Year began with a new adventure - a journey into Patagonia. And didn't we start in style, travelling not by bus nor car, nor even horse, but instead by giant cargo boat! We boarded the giant Navimag container-cum-cruise ship and spent four days travelling down chilly and extremely windy Chilean fjords, over the bumpy ocean, alongside one of the largest glaciers of the Hielo Sur (which itself is the largest non-polar icefield in the world!) and into Puerto Natales. Depending on the weather, the days were spent either sitting out on the deck or sitting in the 'restaurant' looking out rain covered windows, to simply stunning scenery. The wilderness of the O'Higgins National Park was broken only by a visit to the small hamlet of Puerto Eden, a remote settlement of mostly Kawéshkar indigenous people, miles and miles from the nearest neighbours. On the final night of the cruise there was a fiesta in the bar, which involved one of the crew playing a few tunes on the guitar followed by what else but our favourite game, BINGO!
Now you've already heard about my winning ways in the game of bingo (see Peru blog), and Jen's attempts to
Meet the Trekkers: The Bad-Ass Bandana Boy
'I eat trails like this for breakfast!...with a balanced mix of dried fruits and granola of course' get me in some sort of trouble during the game by telling me to call bingo when I hadn't really won... But this time, a single line across the card actually counted as a win. Two German guys claimed the first prize on offer by completing a single line. As there were two of them and only 1 prize the crew made them compete in a dance off, where the unfortunate fellows had to break out some dance moves in front of us all and we had to cheer for who we thought was best. But there were still many more chances for us to win. In fact, it wasn't long before I had two whole lines of my card completed, so I jumped up yelling 'BINGO!'. This time there was no one to share the prize with, so I claimed the bottle of Chile's finest red wine and was about to return to my seat when Jen started a chant from up the back of the bar, 'Make him dance! Make him dance!..' And much to my horror, they did... first to a slow, salsa number, then to a bit of Elvis, I had to strut my stuff, alone
Meet the Trekkers: Miss Patagonia
'My charity is the penguins... I knit jumpers for them so they don't get cold!' in front of 80-odd people at first laughing, then clapping along...THANKS A LOT JENNIFER.....
After that all other winners also had to do a dance in front of everyone with hilarious results until the last game was completed. And then it was time for the losers round. Taking part in this were Jen (obviously!) as well as the two English guys were had befriended - Tim and Mike, both of whom we suspected were not ticking off their numbers for fear of winning and having to dance! And so by games of elimination it came down to the final 3 losers: Jen, Tim and a girl. Poor Tim ended up 'winning' and in doing so got himself a bottle of red, and led us all in a dance of YMCA. Needless to say it was a bit of a big night after that, having claimed the two alcohol prizes between the four of us!
Torres Del Paine After arriving in Puerto Natales the countdown began until the arrival of a friend! That's right, after all these months of going batty at/with each other, Jen and I were about to have another travelling companion. The lucky contender? Chontelle, our
NP Torres del Paine
view up to Glacier Grey and the massive southern Patagonian icefield very good friend from back in the uni days, fellow 'Knicker' (netball team) member and allround superstar. And didn't she arrive in style, tired and hungry after 48hrs of transit from Sydney to the end of South America! The next couple of days were spent rather lazily catching up and preparing for our first big trek.
After an information session at the Erratic Rock hostel (3pm everyday; highly recommended fellow travellers), spending 50 bucks on a variety of dried fruits and nuts (its true!) and waterproofing our packs we were ready. Into Parque Nacional Torres del Paine the next morning, where the howling, cold wind gave us an instant welcome. A quick catamaran ride across the lake and we were off and walking. Well, to tell the truth, we walked for about 2 minutes, figured we were going in the wrong direction, then somebody called snack break, and we all wondered how we were going to survive 5 days at this rate!! The track we were walking is known as 'The W' because of shape (surprise surprise of a W), and is ridiculously popular. Something like 200,000 hikers undertake it each year (i.e. over Summer) and soon we were
NP Torres del Paine
Jen and Chonny get a close up of the icebergs that have collapsed from the nearby Glacier Grey being overtaken by most of them! At times the going was tough, leading to somebody naming our expedition as 'FAT CAMP'! But it wasn't long before we came across the first of many truly magnificent sights along the trek: a view down over Glacier Grey and a fraction of the mammoth Hielo Sur or southern patagonian icefield (see above). We camped the first night near the base of the glacier, and watched some of our clearly crazy colleagues take evening swims in the icy, icy water. The absolute highlight of The W came a couple of days later when we ditched our packs for a stroll up and back Valle Frances (French Valley). Through forest and over rocks and waterfalls, we made our way up the valley with spectacular view the entire way. To the left the incredible Glacier Frances provided the soundtrack, with thunderous cracking sounds and the occassional sight of a chunk of ice collapsing off of it. To the right the stunning geology of a sheer cordillera (mountain range), with layers of rocks similar to a chocolate and caramel layercake (yes, walking makes you particularly hungry!), and behind a stunning view back down over the river, across
NP Torres del Paine
forest of the great southern genus Northofagus were a common sight the lakes, forests and grasslands of the southern section of the park. Really amazing stuff!!!
On the last morning of The W we rose early for a sunset view of the park's principal attraction, the Torres del Paine themselves (a trio of towering mountains). Now when you're just a stone's trow away from the South Pole in the middle of January the sun rises pretty early, and so at 3:45am we were up and climbing up the steepest section of the whole trek! When we finally reached the top a dark silhouette of the towers presented itself, with an outline of the glacier and lake below. We found a rock to sit on, jumped into our sleeping bags, fired up the campstove and had a steaming hot coffee, watching the towers in style and comfort as the day began. But the sun wasn't playing along, the clouds began to thicken and the occasional flake of snow fell (height of Summer remember!) on us. Still, it was an very powerful sight! A lazy rest of the morning saw us pack up the tent, finish the last section of The W and celebrate with a beer in the lodge!
Glacier NP Torres del Paine
waterfall and lenga forest Perito Moreno
In leaving Torres Del Paine we were also leaving Chile and returning once more to Argentina. We arrived in the tourist town of El Calafate (named after a berry which grows in the area), for a trip out to the nearby Perito Moreno glacier. Whilst not the biggest glacier of Hielo Sur, Perito Moreno is certainly the most accessible and one of the most interesting. Lookouts a short way across the valley provided a close up view of the glacier, close enough to see all the crevices and cracks. With it being very cold and drizzling most of the time, we had expected our day tour bus to drop us off for a half hour wander around, take some photos, and then bus back into town. But no, in dropping us off our driver informed that we should meet him back in the carpark in 3 hours time! 3 cold, windy hours!!! Thankfully the glacier provided a whole lot of entertainment to keep us occupied. From time to time a section would collapse into the river below, with thunderous claps and some people pointing, whilst others asked 'where? where?' Quite a unique experience and well worth the 3
NP Torres del Paine
the amazing Glacier Frances! hours of cold and rain!
Monte Fitz Roy Arriving in the smaller town of El Bolson, the wind gave us an even stronger welcome, feeling literally like a slap in the face as we climbed off the bus, making us trip and almost fall flat on the ground as we wandered about town from booked out hostel to booked out hostel. We finally found one with the ugliest/cutest of dogs named Tango. From town we undertook our second major trek, 2 days through the national park to see Monte Fitz Roy (over 3000m, the highest peak in the region) and its surroundings. On the first day the wind was extremely intense, pushing us this way and that. We set up camp quite early, were tortured by dust storms ripping through the site, but managed to hold it all together...just! Unfortunately the weather led us to cancel a climb up the mountain to a closer view of Monte, and it was cloudy all day so we wouldn't have seen the supposeldy amazing peak anyway. The next day we continued on and the sun came out and the wind died down and all of a sudden it was great to be
outdoors once again. We walked past a series of lakes (named Mother, Daughter, and Grand-daughter), through great grasslands and as we were walking away the peak of Fitz Roy finally showed itself (almost). After a visit up to Cerro Torre and its nearby peaks for lunch we were on the way back to town. Fat Camp expedition 2, completed!
Tierra Del Fuego The final frontier in our Patagonian adventures was also the final frontier for our southward journey through the continent, to the archipellago of Tierra del Fuego, or the Land of Fire! After spending a few days in Ushuaia, the southern most city of the world, we ventured our for Fat Camp part 3: Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego. We seemed to be in cool-down mode, as most of the walks here were of short length and duration. However, we were clearly in the groove as we were combining several walks in each day! We walked a great track along Lapataia Bay where snow capped mountains abutt the sea, through magnificent stands of lenga and ñire forests, saw dams constructed by beavers introduced from North America and checked out a few peat bog wetlands. These bogs grow over
hundreds and thousands of years, with the extremely cold temperatures slowing decomposition and allowing plant and fungus layers to slowly accumulate in height.
But Fat Camp wasn't over yet. We had saved a doozy for our last hurrah - a climb from see level, up past the tree line, past the snow and to the peak of Cerro Guanaco, just shy of 1000m elevation. Whilst it was tough work we made it to the top in record time (smashing the advertised recommended time!), where we enjoyed fantastic views over Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel, across the great snowy mountains of Chile to the south. Just like in Valle Frances of the Torres del Paine, the view here sent shivers down the spine.. Or was that just the freezing cold wind coming up the mountain???
And so Fat Camp was over. We had walked well over 100km up and down mountains, camped out in the wild and eaten ridiculous quantities of nuts, pack-o-soups and porridge. We treated ourselves a relaxing few days in Ushuaia, frequenting a lovely little cafe (and their delicious cakes!) and took an easy day trip in a boat through the Beagle Channel, visiting sea lions and
cormorants along the way. Patagonia had treated us to the most amazing of landscapes, with challenging mountains and weather to boot.. This we will never forget! But it was now late January and we were sick of the cold weather. This is Summer, lets steam it up, and get amongst it in Buenos Aires!!!
Jeff and Jen and Chonny!
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