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Published: March 15th 2007
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After that nice wee wander in the Chilean Andes, I got a bus to head back to Argentina and the town of Calafate. I booked a tour from Puerto Natales that would cross the border, visit the Glacier Perito Moreno and drop me in Calafate in the same day.
The glacier is an impressive 5km wide and 60m high falling into Lago Argentino. It's the most popular and most accessible glacier in South America. Up to the late 80's, the Perito Moreno was the only one advancing but is now receding like all the others. I really enjoyed seeing it but to my taste it was too much of a tourist trap. In the car park there were heaps of tour buses and herds of people standing on the catwalks and vantage points staring and taking pictures of that massive wall of ice. Every fifteen minutes you would hear a great crack, and witness a huge chunk of ice the size of a house falling into the lake. What made the whole situation a bit weird was whenever that happen, everyone would be cheering and clapping like we were in some cheap American talk show.
Back in Calafate, I
decided not to stay the night and took the bus, 4 hours north to the small town of El Chalten. The town was built in the middle of some national park. It's a tiny place, has no banks or ATMs but has the essential bars and hostels. It's also full of outdoor freaks who come to explore the Fitz Roy mountain range.
When I arrived in El Chalten at 11pm, I couldn't get a place to stay but eventually found one in the outskirts. The hostel didn't have a name, it just had a sign saying "Hostel 25 pesos” and looked like it wasn't even half finished. The roof top seemed to have been put up overnight and the entrance door would slam open when ever there was a gust of wind. The owner told me he had to open the place in January due to high demand and pressure from other hostels that were constantly full. He also added that he could not finish the place or replace the banana shaped door because the only carpenter in town spent most of his time drunk and passed out in some gutter.
Even though the hostel was falling to pieces, I
really enjoyed my stay there. I spent three days drinking in pubs with other folks and sweating it all out the next day while doing daily treks around the Fitz Roy.
On the 25th of Feb, I left El Chalten for El Bolsón, 130km south of Bariloche. The bus journey to El Bolsón is the longest I've done so far. Had to sit for 28 hours with no movies on, just cheap Argentine music videos being played full blast. To avoid any further woe to my sensible hears, I took some of my Gran's sleeping pills, passed out and drooled on the guy next to me for half the trip.
El Bolsón is a very chilled out place, a good escape from all the madness of Bariloche. It grew substantially in the beginning of the 70's where many hippies from around the world started a new life and settled there. Now a days you can still feel that same vibe walking in the town centre. Every two days, you have old hippies selling there stuff in the handcraft market and you see artists and jugglers playing around in the main square.
During one of my days there, I
rented some bikes with two Austrians that I met in El Chalten. On a whim, we went to visit the "Bosque Tallado" a forest where trees are sculptured by different artists. Never thought that getting there would be so difficult. We had to cycle, or better speaking, we were sagging over our bikes and pushing them 10 km up a mountain to see the woods. After seeing all those nice sculptures, we then went speeding in a swaggering way down that mountain . Fifteen minutes later, I hit a rock, went flying over the handle bar and into some bushes... I seem to have a real attraction for Patagonian bush. Anyway, I luckily had a few scratches and managed to rip my trousers at groin level. Of course being jinxed, it was the only day I didn't have any clean boxers and decided to go commando. After that enjoyable event and to the amusement of the Austrians, had to cycle in a huff through the whole town keeping my legs closed with the hope I wouldn't be put away for indecent exposure.
After what happened I felt I had hide and after three days in El Bolson, I went
back for two days to Bariloche before heading to Chile. As soon as I got there, I bumped into the Frenchies (those with whom I did the Torres del Paine) and to be honest after that the whole thing was a blur. It became a weekend of white Russian cocktail fuelled nights. Following that heavy weekend, on the Monday tried to hitchhike all the way up to Santiago but with no luck. Stood on the side of the road for more than 5 hours under the rain with a terrible hangover and lack of sleep. At the end, I could not be bothered and decided to leave my hitchhiking experience aside for some other time and got a bus up.
I have now been back in Santiago for a week. It's good to feel that scorching heat again and being able to stuff my face with excellent home made Chilean food. Unfortunately it's just a wee break with the family. Today, I'm getting into another tremendous bus ride to see my cousin a 1800 km further up north in Iquique.
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Francis et Marie-Jeanne
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salut Nico
Super, tes photos nous rappellent de bons souvenirs..bonne continuation. Amitiés