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Published: June 29th 2006
The Perito Moreno Glaciar
An amazing sight, whether you've seen big glaciars recently or not! For an idea of scale, try to spot the people in the bottom left of the pic.One thing that I wasn't ready for about Argentina was it's size. It's big. Really big. Although we'd planned the trip reasonably well, we're not the speediest travellers by a long way and as such were running out of time in a big way. Em being by far the more organised of the two of us had devised a way of seeing as much as possible given the vast distances involved and our very limited time to cram everything in. First stop was El Calafate, jumping off point for visits to the Perito Moreno glaciar. One very cold morning therefore we found ourselves on a bus from Puerto Natales to El Calafate, and still hurting from the 11 day trek we'd finished the day before.
The bus journey was uneventful except that it was on mostly unpaved roads (known locally as "ripio") which took more time than asphalt would, but we were in Calafate for mid-afternoon, and in a hotel shortly afterwards.
El Calafate itself is a nice little tourist town, and not in any way deserving of the description that our guidebook gave it: "neither cheap nor attractive". Ok, it's not cheap, we did spend quite a bit
My least favorite hire car of the trip
Reliable but utterly charmless Chevrolet Corsa.... not made for anyone with size 10 feet! there, but it's a nice enough place, and the restaurants are excellent, or at least those we tried (if you're going there, try the house pastas in La Cocina, they're top notch, especially the pumpkin & onion ravioli). In any case, we liked the place, and didn't think it justified such a slating. Since we were there for the same reason as everyone else in town, namely to see the glaciar, we bought ourselves a bus ticket. There are a few options when going to see the glaciar. You can go on an organised tour for 80 pesos, which we reckon is a complete waste of money. You could buy a bus ticket, and wander around the area at your leisure for 60 pesos (our chosen option). Or you could hire a small car and visit it completely under your own steam, which with hindsight is what we should have done.
In any case, we got to see the glaciar, and what a sight. I didn't figure that I could possibly be that impressed by a glaciar after seeing Glaciar Grey in the Torres del Paine National Park a few days before, but boy was I wrong! We decided
Calafate sunrise
Getting up at 6am is never nice, but when the sky looks like this, it definitely softens the blow. to do the boat trip on the lake, figuring that the closer you could get to it, the more impressive it would be. With hindsight, I wouldn't bother. The best way to see that glaciar is simply to walk to the lookout point and soak it all up. The view is as awe-inspiring as any you'll have the pleasure of experiencing. If you're lucky, you might also see a car-sized chunk of ice fall into the lake, although you'd probably only realise it was that big from the noise it made. That was the thing that we couldn't grasp, even when looking right at it, the size of the ice face. It's 60 metres tall, but with nothing nearby to compare it to, you have to keep reminding yourself, "this thing is big big big".
Suitably wowed, we went back to Calafate and made onwards plans. Next stop was Bariloche, much further north, in the Argentine lake district. Unfortunately for us, all the flights were booked up for days. Not that we mind long bus journeys you understand, just that we were running out of time in a big way. Like it or not, bus was the only way
out of there - and not just any bus either. The only option turned out to be a three-leg journey starting at.... wait for it..... 3am! Then a change of busses at 7am and another at 8pm, finally arriving at noon the following day, a grand total of some 33 hours. Joy. Still, if it's the only way......
We arrived in Bariloche the following afternoon in suprisingly good spirits, and not too tired. Having learnt our lesson we immediately booked ourselves some flights to Buenos Aires and then set about hiring a car in which we planned to explore the surrounding area. We went for a much more sensible machine than our last rental, this time a Chevrolet Corsa - don't let the Chevy bit fool you, this was a crappy Vauxhall with a different badge. Nasty. Anyhow, we were off....
We decided to take to the road straight away as again time constraints meant that we had much distance to cover over a short period of time. We first headed north to do the 7 lakes route, through beautiful national park areas and past tranquil lakes which looked just like great mirrors reflecting the trees at their
shores - breathtaking. On we drove, making camp the first night on the shores of Lake zzzz.
Next day we headed to another of Argentina's many national parks, Parque National Lanin. We drove for hours through plains and then along the shores of azure lakes before making camp once more on the shore of a beautiful lake, in a free camp site organised by the park authorities (normally you have to pay to enter the park so it's not totally free, but at this time of year the park office is closed, so it is - bargain!). We cooked up a tasty dinner of fetucini bolonese and went to sleep generally feeling very happy with our lot.
The next day we headed across the border into Chile once again, our passports rapidly being filled by Chile/Argentine customs stamps. On the way to the border we passed forests of "monkey puzzle" trees (their correct name escapes me right now) and decided that as soon as we have a garden big enough for trees, we'll have some of these - they're cool! A few miles more and we were in Chile. The difference between the two countries is immediately apparent,
Ooooh that's cold!!
... and that's at 11.15am!! Imagine what it must have been in the middle of the night! but it's wierd when you've driven from one to another in the same day. Even the weather changed as we descended into Chile - overcast in Argentina, sunny and warm in Chile, the change taking place over no more than 20km. Wierd. We made it to Pucon, a favorite destination as it's from there that climbing tours up the local volcano are offered, which we eventually decided against as we were still hurting from the hardcore trekking we'd done only a few days before!
As the sun hadn't set by the time we got there, we decided to head out and go up the ripio road that leads to the foot of the volcano. I mean it can't be
that rough, right? Wrong! Pot holes all over the place, and when we finally came to turn round, figuring that our litte car couldn't take any more abuse, I managed to get it stuck on a steep verge, with one of the back wheels completely off the ground! Doh! As luck would have it, using a combination of counterweighting the corner of the car that was off the ground, and sticking rocks and bits of wood under the front wheel
Vulture meat
Macabre, I grant you, but seeing the corpse of a cow by the roadside one frosty morning inspired me to take this rather nasty photo. that was trying to dig itself a nice hole, we finally managed to get all four wheels back on terra firma. Phew! No damage to the car except a little scuff to the wheel trim, another stroke of luck, could have been much much worse!
Being that it was Em's birthday we decided to treat ourselves and stay in a "cabana". These are wood cabins, often on lake shores. We didn't know what to expect but were very pleased with what we found. For £25 we got a fully furnished 2 bedroom cabin with wood fire, balcony, kitchen, TV (although only two channels, and both pretty dire) you name it. We had a lovely evening, having been roughing it for a few days, and I cooked Em a birthday dinner of good old bangers'n'mash with red onion gravy - sounds ordinary to you, I bet, but it's funny the things you miss when you're away!
After that it was all about more lakes and more driving. We passed numerous blue and green lakes, all of them stunning, and headed down to another national park, this time on the Chilean side of the border. We made camp in the
One of the many beautiful lakes
We didn't have time for many photos on our whistle-stop tour, but this gives you an idea.... park, but not before taking our little car up yet another steep ripio road in order to see another volcano. This time we made it up and back without the car getting off the ground, always a good thing. Camping later that night was a very cold affair. We have no way of knowing for sure, but we reckon that the temperature must have been below 0C. Chilly! Got a reasonable fire going which helped, but we were always going to be a bit cold.
The next day we packed the tent with a tinge of sadness, cold as it might have been, this was our last night of camping in the trip. We had already decided that when we returned to Bariloche we'd get another cabana, if for no other reason than we needed to dry out the tent and pack all our stuff for the flight to Buenos Aires.
Back in Argentina once more, our last night in the lake district was spent in a bungalow complex run by an eccentric English chap, nice enough place but not a patch on the cabana we'd stayed in for Em's birthday (probably for the better as it made
her birthday all the more special). We got to the airport on time the following day, fortunately the girls from the car hire place didn't notice the scuffed wheel trim, and a short while later we were on our way to Buenos Aires.
We had mixed feelings at this point. We were looking forward to Buenos Aires very much, but there was no forgetting that this was the last new place we were going to visit before heading briefly back to Santiago and then inevitably back to reality at home. Fingers crossed then that Buenos Aires, home of tango and gigantic slabs of meat, lived up to it's reputation....
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Stephen Paul
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The Monkey Puzzle Tree is actually called "Araucaria". after its latin name of Araucaria araucana. Acacia is a common type of flowering tree in the northern hemisphere that has nothing to do with the monkey puzzle! http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ecoph27.htm