Rosario - January 27th

Today we are going to Rosairo, the third biggest city in Argentina, as we continue our big city acclimatisation in preparation for Buenos Aires.  One good thing about travelling between these big cities is that they are linked by motorways, and the times on the busses are short.  To avoid the heat we have arranged an afternoon bus so that we can pass the hot hours away in air conditioned comfort.  Because of the late departure we have time to spend blogging and sorting out photos before we head to the bus station for our 14:00 departure.

Except it isn’t 14:00, it is 14:30 but we miswrote the time down in our notebook.  So we actually are an hour early when we arrive.  And like so often happens, being early almost causes us to miss the bus because we aren’t paying enough attention to what is happening (namely our bus is not the bus company we were told it would be but another one instead).  Still we get the bus, and begin the trip to Rosario.

The trip itself begins well, as we speed down the motorway, but all too soon we are off the motorway and stopping in a small town.  And this is when we discover the second miscommunication about this bus, we thought it was an express, getting to Rosario at about 19:30, it is actually a stopping everywhere bus, getting there at 20:45.  There is nothing to do but sit back and watch the rubbish film (Conan the Barbarian).

Because of the time delay when we get to Rosario all we can do is get a taxi to the hostel we are staying in, check in, and find the nearest place to eat.  This turns out to be a pizza place around the corner.  Now there are some who claim that pizzas in Argentina are even better than in Italy or the US, but so far they have been good but not outstanding.  That is until now, as this pizza is one of the best I have ever had.  We had a half and half, one with ham, chees, an egg and peppers, and the other with mince and sweet corn, and both were amazingly good, and not too dear.  Despite the fact that I never actually ate pizza in the US or Italy, I can see how some people can make this claim.

Cordoba - January 26th

The only problem with having English language TV is that you can stay up too late watching it, and hence the next morning is a late start.  Unusually our hotel does not do breakfast itself, but give you a voucher instead for a café on the next block where for once I manage to persuade the waitress to give me diet coke instead of coffee as part of the set breakfast menu.

Then we start looking around Cordoba.  It is the second largest city in Argentina, but doesn’t feel that big.  Yet it has a lot of museums, art galleries and so on.  This is partially because it has been a major educational hub with many universities for a long time.  And the reason for this is the Jesuits.  They founded the town and its first university, and this is so important it is now a UNESCO world heritage site.  So it is to the old Jesuit block that we first head to, although a few shops are visited along the way as Dorota continues her search for the perfect pair of Argentinian trousers.  The Jesuit block itself is fine, but not that much to see here, it is after all only a block in size.  The real part of the UNESCO site are some farms 25km away from town that were built by the Jesuits to finance their operations.  But we aren’t going to get to see them as they are a bit out of the way.

After the Jesuits we continue on our shopping expedition.  Conveniently there is a very large shopping centre one block away from the Jesuit block, so we go in there, look around, and get lunch in the food court.  Afterwards when we emerge it is even hotter than before, by far our hottest day so far, so we decide to afternoon in a museum or two.  However this isn’t as easy as it seems, the first one we try only opens at 20:00, and the second one at 18:00, so we give up and go to a bar for a drink to cool off and wait them out.  We try for a third museum just after 17:00, only to get there and find it was open all afternoon and closes at 17:00.  At this point we give up on museums.  The nice map we got from the tourist office should really have had the opening hours on them.  At least one thing is certain, getting up late didn’t make us miss some of the museums.

We do wander around a bit more, there is a quite large pedestrianized zone in the centre of town with some nice shopping, and of course there are the usual plazas and churches to see, and amazingly we actually find an art gallery open so we go in there as well.  Then we go for dinner on a rooftop before heading back to the hotel, exhausted after 12 hot hours of wandering around Cordoba.

Cordoba - January 25th

Today is a long bus day, as we are taking the 08:30 bus from Mendoza to Cordoba.  This is an 11 hour journey, because it stops everywhere along the way.  This is the price to pay for taking the daytime journey, most of the time slots were night time express busses (although still 9 hours, which actually is too short to sleep properly because there will be a movie and some sort of meal in the way).  The bus station in Mendoza is like a lot of the Argentinian bus stations, bigger than the local airport, and provisioned with more services.  The terminal is like a shopping centre, with pretty much everything you need for a trip, and loads of stuff you don’t need, available in all the shops.

Once we get on the way it is the usual combination of sleeping, eating dulche de leche biscuits, and bad movies.  The only difference today is that we are stopping everywhere, which can be a problem for sleeping and watching movies (with all the people getting on and off).  It also means that the driver has a timetable to keep, which means that despite the fact we are on a very good motorway road, he isn’t doing top speed.  It is a little frustrating, knowing you could be getting there faster.

The day actually passes fairly fast, we got one half decent movie, Cowboys vs. Aliens, which the nuns in front of us slept through, thereby proving for Father Ted fans that Argentinian nuns at least don’t like scifi.  The countryside outside the window was as flat and featureless as ever, the only difference being that now we were in proper farmland, with arable land growing all sorts of crops, not just having cows roaming over scrubland.

When we got to Cordoba with its equally airport sized bus station, we walked to our hotel and dumped our bags.  Not wanting to wander around too much in the dark we asked the reception for a restaurant recommendation nearby and went to an Italian restaurant two blocks away where we ordered food that was far too much for us (only two dishes and a salad, but they do eat big here).  After dinner we went back to our room, and having TV for the first time in a while, watched a brand new subtitled Law and Order SVU before crashing out.

Mendoza - January 24th

The day started with the walk home from the football match.  Actually there isn’t too much to blog about here.  We ended up getting a taxi back to the hostel because the heaven’s opened up again.  We had booked seats under the roof in case of rain, but in the end we could have been on the open terraces and still sat (due to the low turnout) and not got wet for half the price.  But the rain did come eventually.

Because it was after 01:00 when we got back to the hostel we were a bit late getting up the next morning, and by the time we had breakfasted and headed out into town it was after midday.  Due to inconvenient scheduling we had got our two main activities for Mendoza done in a single day (the football became a Mendoza activity when we realised it was the mid-season break in Buenos Aries when we are there, so this was our only chance to catch a match), so we were at a loss as to what to do this time.  There are a lot of excursions to be done from Mendoza, and only half of them involve wine, but we were too tired to go on them.

So basically we ended up just hanging around the town for the day, going to various shops, having a traditional lunch (a Super Pancho, a hot dog, the fast food lunch item in these parts), and then looking for a nice spot to sit and read.  The park we walked to had no trees for shade, which is so unusual among all the tree lined streets in this town.  So we just walked to another plaza instead and sat there reading during the hot part of the day.

In the evening we had a free wine tasting at our hostel, which would have been rude to refuse.  After we went out for dinner at the very Argentine time of 22:00.  We walked to a Tapas restaurant I had been to 4 years before, and which I raved about.  When we had gone on Sunday it looked like it had closed for good such were the locks on the doors, but tonight it was open, and the food was every bit as good as I remembered.  The only problem with the food was we ordered too much, as we often do in Argentina.

Mendoza - January 23rd

The main reason why anyone comes to Mendoza is simple, wine.  This is the wine capital of Argentina, and a lot of the wineries in the surrounding countryside offer tours and tastings.  We were thinking about doing an expensive tour (about £100 GBP) but our hostel can sign us up to a cheaper one (about £40) so we decide to give that one a go.

One of the ‘benefits’ of this trip is that we will get picked up from our hostel, but this turns out to be a curse as we are one of the first groups picked up, which means we get a nice one hour bus ride around the city as everyone else gets picked up.  Eventually we head out to the first bodgea, Navarro Correas, which happens to be one owned by Diageo, of Guinness fame (our guide tells us this).  This is a slightly disappointing visit because of two things, the lack of enthusiasm of our guide and the crap wine they give us for tasting.  Our second and third wineries were much better, they were smaller and the guides had much more passion about their subjects.  The second winery, Vistandes, was a small modern winery, albeit with state of the art facilities, but they actually gave us decent wines.  And the third winery, Cavas del Don Arturo, was another small boutique winery which didn’t just give us decent wines, they gave us one of their best (so they say).

Of course some of this generosity through the day is because they know as we get more pissed we buy more wine.  Well that is except for the backpackers like us.  But all the locals with their cars back in Mendoza were stocking up on the wine.  After the tasting was finished (and apparently it has to be done in the morning when the palette is fresh), we went for lunch in a local restaurant.  This had been sold as having more foods that you could try, and we all scoffed at that idea.  But actually it was true. The lunch was a tapas type lunch with over 40 dishes on the table, 7 or 8 types of meat, a similar number of cheeses, and at least a dozen vegtable dishes.  Add to this 5 sauces, a few breads, 2 types of empanadas, a rice dish and a pasta dish, and they pretty much made the 40 dishes.  It was an amazng spread, and given the food must have cost £20, the wine at least £10,it made the whole day really good value.

When we got back to the hostel at 16:30 all we could do after that food and wine was have a siesta.  This was good because in the evening we were going to go to a football match.  The match was a local pre-season friendly (actually mid-season friendly but the leagues over here are strangely organised) between San Lorenzo (one of the big 5 Buenos Aries teams) and San Martin, a local team from nearby San Juan playing only their third season in the top flight.  We were going to the match with one of the staff from the hostel, and a friend of his.  They don’t let us go on our own.  We met up at 20:00 for the match, even though it didn’t kick off until 22:00.  This is because usually there are massive queues at the security gates, but for this match there wasn’t actually a big crowd, so we got through fairly easily.  I say that, but the search was thorough.  We had already left most of our possessions in the hostel for pickpocketing safety (again not an issue with this turnout) but anything which looked like something we could use as a weapon or throw onto the pitch would have been taken.  I had a pen in my pocket which I had forgotten about, and it was taken, the policeman who took it was kind enough to demonstrate to me that how could be used to stab someone.

Once inside the stadium all you can get to eat is the local speciality of Choripan, which is a chorizo hot dog.  It is some sort of tradition; you could set up stalls selling other stuff but nobody would buy it.  I’m not going to give too much of a match report, it was a boring first half although San Martin took the lead about 5 minutes before half time.  The second half was better, San Martin scored again, then San Lorenzo had a man sent off for an outrageous off the ball revenge punch.  However this woke them up and they scored twice to level, but then in extra time San Martin scored to win 3-2.  Quite entertaining for us neutrals, although as we were in the San Lorenzo end (this was deemed by the hostel to be the safer end – as it is more neutral, San Martin is a local rival of Mendoza) there was disappointment all around.  However you wouldn’t know it, the fans sang all the way through.  Also you woulnd’t have known there were only a few thousand of them, they made a lot of noise (more than an entire Emirates crowd at an Arsenal match).  The match finished at one minute to midnight, which is the latest I’ve ever been in a football stadium at, and which means the walk home falls into tomorrow’s blog.

Mendoza - January 22nd

As usual waking up on a bus is a slightly discomfiting experience.  It was definitely so this morning as the driver turned the lights on to wake us up at 06:30, mostly so that we could get our breakfast served before we got to Mendoza at 07:30.  Of course the breakfast was the same load of dulche de leche cookies, with extra dulche de leche on the side, that we got for tea the night before.

The rain that we had had the night before (actually it was a very heavy thunderstorm that lasted for hours and some of the lightning strikes were quite close) had disappeared, so we were able to walk from the massive Mendoza bus station to our hostel.  As we arrive in time for breakfast, even though we weren’t booked in for that night, we got a real breakfast there as well.  The hostel is actually very nice, with a garden for sitting out in, and a washing machine which is free for guests.  So we spend a lot of the time doing our laundry, a large pile of which has built up over the last week and a half.

Between that, blogging, photos, and all the other chores that have to be done (such as my watching Manchester United beating Arsenal 2-1) it isn’t until about 17:00 before we embark to explore the city.  This is actually the only city we will be in that either of us (Gavin in this case) has been in before (and in fact the last time I was here Manchester United beat Arsenal 2-1 as well) so I show Dorota around.  Although all there is to see are the large tree lined avenues and the beautiful plazas throughout the city.  This is because everything is closed, it being a Sunday, so our staying in and doing chores didn’t seem like such a waste of time after all.

At about 19:00 we start looking for a place to eat dinner.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  Everything is closed still, even a nice tapas place I wanted to go back to.  It takes walking around until 20:00 before we see places starting to open.  The locals here eat so late that even by 21:30 when we finish dinner most of them are only starting to arrive to restaurants to begin eating.  It’s a different way of life here.

Bariloche Mendoza Bus - January 21st

Today is another massive travelling day.  We are going from Bariloche to Medoza which is quite a long journey.  An amusing diversion I’ve developed (amusing for me anyway) is mapping where we are in terms of degrees south to degrees north in Europe.  So far we have done from Newcastle (Ushuaia) to Plymouth (El Calafate) to La Rochelle (Perito Morneo) to Porto (Bariloche) and now we are moving onto Casablanca.  So it has been quite a hectic three weeks, and most of the distance has been done in the last week.

The good thing about this overnight bus is that it only starts at 13:00 so checking out of the hostel is not too stressful.  In fact we even get an early lunch (salad, we know we have to keep our 5 a day up here ourselves, as the meals can be quite meaty) and some photos done in a café before going to the bus terminal.

The bus itself is a revelation, far better than anything we have been on before, a double decker, and we are in the lower posh class.  So we get decent leg room, almost flat beds, and a dinner, which is almost entirely made of dulche de leche (a caramelly type substance).  We stop in Neuquen bus terminal at 19:00, which is a very modern and nice terminal, even having airport style carrousels for bags, and best of all, baggage trolleys. Here we mistakenly order two dinners in the cafeteria, when one had enough meat for both of us. The hamburger I got was the size of the dinner plate.

After that it is onto the bus to Mendoza.  This is a similar bus, although slightly older, which means that instead of using your own headphones for the films it is on a speaker.  Other than that it was fine, although the same cannot be said for the film choices.  It began to look like eating our dinner had been a good choice (although they did give us some more dulche de leche at about 20:30 to keep us going), as the hours ticked by with no food, but then at 23:15 came dinner, a turkey and ham dinner with mashed potatoes, and jelly for dessert (all with wine if you want).  This and the one decent film of the day starting at 23:00 meant we didn’t get asleep until well after midnight.

Bariloche - January 20th

One of the main attractions in Bariloche is to drive around what is called the Circuito Chico.  This is a drive along the big lake front and then loop around some other lakes, before coming back into town along the same stretch of road along the lake front.  It’s about 70km long, but a clever bike hire company has based itself at the beginning of the loop, meaning you can do it as an easy 35km cycle.  Which is what we plan to do today.

We get a local bus out to the starting point, and after a quite long briefing about what attractions are available in the area, we get our bikes and helmets and set off.  We probably haven’t gone 500 metres before we encounter our first problem, Dorota’s chain comes off.  I fix it, and then as I start off my chain comes off.  We probably should have gone back with the bikes at that point, but for some reason we continue on.  Because the tarred road is under repair, we have to go on a gravel track shortcut, but it turns out this road is full of dogs which appear quite viscous as they chase us.  It is not helped by the fact that the chain problems are really gear problems which means that getting the right gear to speed away from the dogs uphill is not easy.

After those two problems the rest of the day goes quite well.  We lunch on a little beach on the main lake (which like the one at Calafate is massive) and we go for a walk to a hidden lake (hidden from the main road, but well signposted so actually it is crowded), and we see all the scenic views over the lakes.  We also go to what is called the Swiss Colony, a little village in the mountains.  Here we have what might well be the best ice creams either of us have ever had.  They weren’t that cheap, but the quality of the ice cream, especially Dorota’s deep chocolate and my forest fruits, was amazing.

After that we head back to return the bikes.  Our legs actually suffered today, even though in comparison to Vietnam it was short and not too steep.  I think it might be because we didn’t eat dinner last night.  We make up for it with a big Italian dinner tonight.

Bariloche - January 19th

We wake up to a much sunnier morning and much better views across the lake, as some of the previous night’s ash cloud has disappeared.  However knowing that the views are still going to be fuzzy in our photos, and also because we have had a lot of hiking already, our plans for today have been changed from a hike up a nearby mountain, to just walking around the town.

The town of Bariloche is the biggest we have been in so far in South America.  It’s also the first to have a bit of a slum on its outskirts.  But the central area is as touristy as anything you could find in Europe.  Being a mountain town with both summer and winter activities it is set up like any Alpine town you could imagine.  And it is not difficult to imagine you are in Switzerland with all the chocolate shops, St Bernard dogs, and other such paraphernalia.  Even the architecture of the main municipal buildings feels Swiss.

The setting of the town has to be its biggest attraction.  If you get a nice enough day, as today was, you can go down and sit on the little lakefront beaches or even go into the water if you are brave enough (we weren’t - it is a bit chilly being glacier fed).

But for all that there is little to do in the town except walk around, go in and out of the many tourist shops, and sit in the various cafes, which is pretty much all we did all day.  We ate at one of the chocolate cafes, two little cakes which turn out to be bigger than they looked on the menu and have 100s of calories each.  Between that and a sneaky trip to McDonalds (for research purposes – to see if the burgers in Argentina are better than elsewhere, and they are better than most, only the Irish ones match in my opinion) we actually ate so much walking around town that in the evening we didn’t bother going out for dinner.

Bariloche - January 18th

Today we travel 800km north to Bariloche.  This is a long journey, but unlike the previous journey of 620km, this one is a day trip, and it must be on better roads because it is only scheduled to take 14 hours, where as our last trip took the same time (barring breakdowns).  The bus we are joining actually comes from El Calafate the previous day and it does a complicated route up Route National 40, that means it leaves guests staying overnight in our hotel, but picks up other guests elsewhere, before returning to our hotel in the morning.  So at least we don’t have to walk all the way down the main (only) street back to the bus station.  When we get on the bus there are a few seats taken by sleeping passengers, so we sit down and we are off.

It is only after a couple of hours when we stop in the first small town after Perito Moreno that I realise that I’m the third Dub in a row, as the sleeping passengers have woken up and taken off their blankets to reveal two Dublin GAA jerseys. And probably more unusual than that, another of the passengers is wearing a St Sylvester’s GAA jersey (to the non-Irish – or even non-Malahide - readers of this blog this is the jersey of the football club in Malahide, meaning there is a fellow passenger from my home village). Unfortunately the hop-on hop-off nature of the bus means the other Irish are off before I have a chance to talk to them.

And that was really the only excitement of the day.  Our 14 hour journey actually only took 12 hours which was a bonus.  The rest of the journey saw a gradual change from the barren landscape of Patagonia, to the alpine landscape of the Argentine Lake District. 

As we go close to Bariloche we did notice that the views became a bit blurred.  A volcano in Chile had started spewing out ash again, and while it wasn’t a problem for tourists (unless they were flying in) it does ruin the views slightly.  And it is a pity as our hostel turns out to be a nice lake front hostel with what could be stunning views.  Tonight on arrival is the weekly beach party, so we just join in by having one beer before retiring exhausted.

Perito Moreno - January 17th

The main reason for stopping in Perito Moreno, other than breaking a really long journey, is to see the nearby Cuevas del los Manos, a UNESCO world heritage site.  We arranged pickup at our hotel  from a local tour agency yesterday, but decided this morning to go to a local bakery for breakfast instead of eating in our hotel.  But we made it back in time for our 08:00 pickup.  We then had a two hour transfer to the caves, mostly back along the same road we were on yesterday.  But at least it was the paved part.

The caves themselves are actually quite interesting, taking longer to see than I would have thought.  They aren’t really caves as we would think, more like rock faces underneath an overhang.  This has protected the 8000-3000 year old paintings, which are mostly of hands and guanacos.  The hands are silhouettes which were presumably some form of ritual, and the guanacos and other symbols are the usual markings to indicate where the wild herds must have been at various times of the year so people could hunt them.  There is quite a lot, about 1km of them.

The setting for the caves was equally dramatic, as we walk halfway along a cliff side in a canyon.  So as a second part of the tour we get to trek down into the canyon and back along it.  It adds an hour to the trip but makes it a bit more of a day out.  Otherwise the driving there and back would be longer than the visit.  All we can do on the journeys to stop ourselves from being bored is play spot the guanaco or nandu (the flightless rheas).

We get back to town there is not much else to do except sort out photos on the extremely slow internet.  In the evening we go to one of the local restaurants, where you have whatever is on the menu (it was beef or chicken milanesa that night, like schnitzel, with chips and salad) and it was probably our best value meal so far.  We also took a picture of the statue of Perito Moreno, the famous Argentinean naturalist and explorer after whom so much in this region is named (glaciers, lakes, a mountain, and of course this town).

Perito Moreno - Janaury 16th

The first thing I remember about today was being woken up on the night bus at 03:15 as all the other passengers board at El Chalten, the trekking town we couldn’t find any decent cheap accommodation in.  The next thing is waking up at 05:00 as the drivers changed shifts and seeing how frosty it was outside.  Then it is waking up at 10:00 and seeing how sunny and hot it was outside.  With cold nights and hot days this part of Patagonia is almost a desert.  Despite the interruptions, it actually wasn’t that bad a night’s sleep.

We are going up Route 40, which is supposed to be an Argentinian version of Route 66, but as said it is across a fairly barren landscape so there is not much to see.  The road itself is a bit of an enigma as well, at some points it is gravelly and we can only make 20kmph on it, at other points it is a nice tarred road and we are hitting 100kmph.

The main talking point of the journey was the bus breaking down.  We were on a gravel road in the middle of this almost desert-like plain at the time and there was nothing around, and not much passing traffic, so it was slightly worrying.  The two bus drivers were trying to fix it, but were not having much success.  Now in the past I have been slightly critical of Israeli tourists in this part of the world, but in fairness this time they did help out.  Two of them, no doubt with some military training in driving trucks or tanks across the desert, got up to help the drivers, and actually managed to fix it.  So we only had an hour’s delay in the end.

Thus we were at our next destination, the little town of Perito Moreno at 15:30.  Having travelled 620km north it is now a lot hotter at midday, and although the town is small, just a main street and 2 roads each side wide, the main street is about 12 blocks long, and our hotel is the other end from the bus station.  So it is a long hot walk with the backpacks on.  After checking in we give the town a once over, seeing the few restaurants and bars before we choose empanadas from the local bakery for dinner at the lakeside.

El Calafate Perito Moreno Bus - January 15th

Our extra day in El Calafate has played havoc with our travel schedule.  Getting out of here isn’t as easy as getting in, the main problem being that going north, as we are, the next town, El Chalten, is a trekking paradise akin to Torres del Paine, and with the fire there, everyone has flocked to El Chalten.  So instead we are skipping it, and going further north, but this is where the long gaps between towns really begins to kick in.  And so buses are infrequent, and journeys are long.  All of which conspires to see us on the next available bus out, at half past midnight tonight.

As we have a day to fill we go to a little known part of Parc National Los Glaciers called Lago Roca. This lake is actually part of Lago Argentina, but that lake is so big that all of its bays have their own names.  However we are not actually going to the lake, we are going to attempt to climb our biggest peak so far, Cerro Cristal, which is 1280m high (from a 180m start).  I’m a bit worried because the time on the maps to do it is 4 hours up and 3 hours down, and there are only 7 hours to the return bus.  So there is no margin for error.

We set off from the bus stop which is unfortunately 1.5km away, but we make good time, going up the first 480m in an hour.  That has been fairly steep, but now it gets steeper, yet we still make another 400m in the next hour, so it looks on course.  At this point we see our first fellow hiker of the day, a German guy, who after a brief chat powers on ahead of us.  We go on but only 80m from the top it gets too steep and gravelly for us, especially as we don’t have trekking poles, so we have to turn around.  It’s a pity too because we would have made it inside 3 hours, well faster than the guidebook says.

The whole point of the climb was to see the Torres del Paine mountains again, as at this point we are only 50 km away from them and they can be seen from the top.  So instead of going up we work our way around the mountain to see them from the far side.  The descent is easier, and as we are now looking forward we have great views of the lakes and the Perito Moreno glacier, so it is a lot more enjoyable.  We stop for lunch in the forest and again we meet the German as he comes down.  We start talking to him as we descend and it is only he goes ahead of us that we realise Dorota left her camera at the lunch stop. The man is a jinx.  So we have to trek 100m back up the mountain to get it back.  Still it means we can say we did climb over 1100m on the mountain.

Due to our speed we get down early so we take the chance to visit some prehistoric rock art nearby but this turns out to be very disappointing, there was something there, but honestly I couldn’t make out what it was.  We actually end up having to wait for our bus, and then it is a long ride back to town.  The good thing about our new hostel for last night is that it is right next to the bus station, meaning it is an easy place for us to leave our bags and change for the night bus journey.

El Calafate - January 14th

Part of the reason yesterday was a hang around day in El Calafate is because we couldn’t get the trip we wanted to the local highlight, the Perito Moreno Glacier.  We could have been boring and got a bus and boat trip to view the glacier, but we wanted to walk on it.  The trekking trips are a bit more booked out, so we had to wait an extra day to get it.  Bad and all as that wait was it wasn’t as bad as the wait for the bus to pick us up from the hostel, which seemed to take an eternity to arrive.  It was a small minibus of about 14 people, which looked like a nice small group for trekking, until it pulled up next to a bus of about 50 who were all going to be doing the trek with us.

It took just over an hour to get to the boat dock inside the national park.  The glacier stretches across Lago Argentina, and so you can sail on the lake and look up at the cliffs of ice.  This is quite impressive, and even more so as you have to navigate through icebergs to get to the other side of the lake.  This is the side from which the glacier comes out into the lake, and therefore it is the point at which we start trekking.  The transition from rock to ice was easy, and walking on the ice wasn’t too hard as we had been given crampons.  Walking on the ice wasn’t too bad although one or two parts were steep as we climbed quite a bit above the entry point.  After an hour’s walking we descended into a valley where we were greeted with the sight of glasses and a bottle of Jameson’s.  The ice naturally came from the glacier itself.  So we had Irish whiskey and ice on a glacier in Argentina.  Honestly that part alone made the expense of the ice trekking worthwhile.

After we got back down onto solid land we had our packed lunch at a little picnic spot built for the tour groups.  Here we could see and hear the glacier ‘calving’, that is producing new icebergs, as bits of it fell off into the lake.  This is an amazing experience, as the sound is really loud, but like thunder and lightning it happens after the event.  So unless you are lucky enough to be looking directly at the place cracking up, you don’t get to see the splash, only the after effects.

After lunch we got the boat back to the shore.  This time we got even closer to the glacier and the ice so it was even better.  Then we went by bus up to a headland overlooking the glacier.  Here the national park has constructed a series of boardwalk balconies overlooking the glacier which give very good views.  This time we are looking at the north side of the glacier, where before it was the south side, so we get to see a whole new set of views, and hear a whole new set of icebergs being created.

Afterwards we returned to El Calafate, but not to our nice hostel.  Instead because this trip forced us to stay an extra day we have had to find another hostel.  But our original hosts have been so kind to transfer all our bags for us so it is an easy check-in.  This gives us time to go out to have a big pasta and pizza dinner in a restaurant on main street.

El Calafate - January 13th

Because all the trips we wanted to do were booked for today our first full day in El Calafate consists of not much more than hanging around town.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as we have had a lot of travelling so far.  To put it in context we have travelled the length of England in 10 days on some pretty poor roads (Ushuaia is as far south as Newcastle is north, and El Calafate matches Plymouth).

Because we are not under time pressure we start the day fairly late, and we head off to the local bird sanctuary at about 11.  This is the extent to which being in South America has turned us into bird watchers (and it happened the last time, I remember searching for pictures of Toucans and Condors before).  This time it is the Chilean Flamingo which is our primary target, and we do get to see a few of them at the lake, although from a bit of a distance.  However we do get close to some other birds, including a few birds of prey which try to swoop on a dog that is hanging around.  But as with all bird watching there are more failed photos than successful ones.  As well as the two small lakes that the bird reserve is built around, we also walk along the shores of Lago Argentina, the biggest lake in Argentina.

Other than that we just hang around the town all day, going up to a mirador (viewpoint) overlooking the town (which didn’t really have much of a view because of all the trees lining the streets), eating ice cream (made from Calafate berries, the town is named after a type of blackberry) and shopping for food for our upcoming trips (where we have to supply our own lunches).

In the evening we ate again at our hostel, although this time we learnt our lesson from the previous day.  Instead of having a shared salad to start and two massive main courses, this time we had two soups to start, and we shared a massive main course.

El Calafate - January 12th

Today we leave Chile and go back to Argentina.  Like the last time I left Chile back in 2008 I still feel there is more to see there, but it’s unlikely our schedule will see us back there on this trip.  The journey today to El Calafate is a 5 hour trip, so we have some food to eat on the trip, including grapes.  We assumed we had a couple of hours to the border post near the Torres del Paine park, but unbeknown to us this bus goes through a border post that is very close to Puerto Natales, so we have to eat our grapes quite quickly to get rid of them before the border.  Of course when we get there this time they do not bother looking for contraband fruit so we could easily have got through.

The rest of the trip is uneventful, and the view from the road is pretty boring, flat and quite brown.  Except for one viewing point just outside El Calafate which the bus stopped at.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a public bus stop for photos before.

When we arrive in El Calafate we head straight for our hostel, which is a very nice one just off the main street.  The woman running it used to be a tour guide so we get a lot of information about the area and start planning our stay here.  Unfortunately the fire in Torres has meant a lot more people are staying here, and tours and transport options are harder to work out.  Eventually we work out a travel plan which suits us, and only requires us to stay one more night than we had planned to stay in El Calafate so it’s not too bad.

After this all we really had time for is a quick look around town, which is basically a single main street and a few roads leading off it, and then we went back to the hostel for dinner.  The husband of the lady running it is a former chef, and cooks for guests if they order before 5pm.  So we ordered and we were not disappointed, the portions of the food he gave us were massive and it was all very tasty.  We were late to dinner though, as we fell asleep while waiting, the stress of travel and arranging it proving a bit too much.

Puerto Natales - January 11th

We decided to give ourselves a day off after our two days of trekking, so today is just a hang out day in Puerto Natales.  So we had a nice lazy morning hanging around the hostel doing very little (except organising laundry – one of the tedious tasks that has to be done on the road periodically).

We didn’t see daylight until after midday when we left for lunch in the diner we went to on our first day here.  This time Dorota went for the crab salad, as locally caught King Crabs are a speciality around here.  I went for salmon a la pobre, which means poor man’s salmon.  In this case, as with all pobre dishes in Chile, it means with onion and two fired eggs on top.  I wasn’t sure about it, but egg actually went ok with the salmon.  Dorota’s crab salad was very good as well.

After that all we did was hang out in a coffee shop blogging and reading about upcoming destinations in both Argentina and Brazil.  There really is nothing else to do here.  There are a few day trips other than Torres del Paine, but they sort of pale in comparison, so we didn’t do any of them.  Anyway we need a time out now and again.  Sitting on buses for long periods isn’t actually as relaxing as it could be.

In the evening we went to a restaurant called Afrigona.  This is a Zambian-Chilean fusion restaurant, which sounds strange, but it was actually really good.  Although it cost about twice what our budget allowed.  But we enjoyed it, and as they were playing African music during the dinner we even got to hear the Kilimanjaro song which we had both heard so many times when we did our treks there in 2010.  Of course this encouraged us to get the Kilimanjaro chocolate cake desert, so there may have been an ulterior motive for them playing it.

Puerto Natales - January 10th

Despite noise of water over rapids outside the window, it was actually a pretty good night’s sleep in the refugio.  Breakfast was also not too bad, and we set off about 09:00 for a second days trekking in the park.  Our plan, after consulting with the guides, was to go as far as we could alongside one of the big lakes in the park, but we would have to backtrack on ourselves at some point as there was no way out at the other end due to the fire.

To get to the lake we took a ‘shortcut’, although it was an official path, there seemed to be nobody on it.  This was in contrast to the previous day when it seemed like the world was trekking in Torres del Paine.  I think it is because so much of the park is closed that everyone was concentrated into one area, and also it is the showcase trek, so even day trippers are doing it.  Today’s trek is not very high, never going above 300m once we descended from the refuge, but it is quite up and down.  The ups do reward us with some great views though.

Eventually our shortcut took us to the main path, and we encountered more traffic.  This path takes people to another refuge, but we decided to stop before the last slope down to this refuge and turn back.  This was about lunchtime, and we weren’t sure how long it would take us to get back if we went any further because it looked pretty steep back up.  Our bus back was at 20:00 so we didn’t want to miss it.

As it happened we would not have missed it.  We got back to the main hotel in the park at about 17:00, enough time for a tea and then to find out that the only shuttles to take us back to the park entrance were at 19:30.  So we had to wait for 2 hours in the sometimes quite warm sunshine, sometimes quite cold wind, as the crowds built up waiting for the bus.  It was a bit stressful hoping there would be enough bus places out, and there were, but only just.  Still we made it back to Puerto Natales for 22:00, enough time for a quick burger before heading back to our hostel and our bags.

Torres Del Paine - January 9th

Today we are really going into the wild.  Yesterday’s arrangements saw us booking a night in a refuge in Torres del Paine national park.  This is Chile’s most famous national park, a trekking mecca, although due to its remoteness only a few hundred thousand visit each year.  Unfortunately one of them recently lit a camp fire that burnt down more than half the park.  So only a small area is open to us.  Of the parks most famous route, the ‘W’, only about 40% is still open.  So instead of a 4 day trip, we are doing a 2 day trip (to be wholly truthful we probably wouldn’t have done the full trek anyway).

After our transfer to the park, which was almost two hours, and the usual messing about at the park entrance (although this was cheaper than in Argentina, and they do keep records of who goes in an out so they can find lost trekkers easier), we finally started trekking about 11:00.  Our first trek was up to our refuge, the refugio chilenas, which took a couple of hours.  As it was raining when we got there, we decided to check in and use the facilities to eat our packed lunch rather than having an outdoor picnic.  This was a good idea as we also offloaded some gear and by the time we were finished it was sunny again.

Then we started on our trek up to the highlight of the park (luckily not affected by the fire) the view of the Torres (towers) themselves.  This was a much harder trek, alongside a busy river, across many little tributaries joining into it, and finally up a very steep slope to a mirador (viewpoint) of the Torres.  However when we got there it was all worth it, because the view was amazing, especially because there was a lake in front of the towers that was fed by some waterfalls running directly off the glaciers underneath them.  It was awesome.

The strange thing about this famous hike is that there is a lot of backtracking, so our trip down was the same one as up.  It’s funny because you do get to see the same faces on the trek over and over.  We reward ourselves after 6 hours of trekking (about 15km, but almost 900m ascent and 500m back down) with a couple of beers at the refuge, and then what turns out to be a really good dinner, although for slightly more than we are used to paying.  The truth is that although this is a place where everything has to be brought in by horses (including our turkey for dinner) it is actually quite a comfortable place to stay, with hot showers and comfortable beds.  We are sharing a room of 8 with a Dutch couple, and a Swiss couple and their kids (6 and 10!), and we have a very nice chat with them and other guests before we retire to rest for tomorrow’s even longer hike.

Puerto Natales - Janaury 8th

Today we moved north to Puerto Natales.  This is a little village on the romantically named Seno Ultima Esperanza (it’s not as romantic in English, Last Hope Sound; it is more like desperately named).  All it is really famous for is as a stopping off point to the Torres del Paine national park, which is the highlight of the southern part of Chile.

The journey here was a fairly straight forward 3 hour journey on very good roads.  The roads in this part of Chile are much better than the roads on Tierra del Fuego.  The view was also a bit more varied this time, and I got to see a lot of Nandu (Rhea) out the window.  Dorota saw none of this, as she slept from about 5 minutes into the journey until we arrived.  I did doze off but not for long.

We had decided to revert back to our old tactic of getting accommodation at the bus station, partially because wikitravel said it could be done, partially because the bus at Punta Arenas was like that, but mostly because this is cheaper, and this part of the world is not a cheap place to travel in.  The tactic worked because we got a decent hostel, if slightly away from the centre (10 minute’s walk) run by a mad woman who seems to always be on the move trying to drum up business.

The rest of the day was spent booking our trip to Torres del Paine (more about that tomorrow) and looking around the town.  As said there isn’t really much here.  The highlight for me was taking a picture of the giant milodon (an extinct type of sloth).  Dorota sat this ‘highlight’ out by taking a coffee in a local coffee shop.  Other than that and the supermarket where we stocked up on supplies for the trekking trip tomorrow, there is very little to write about Puerto Natales, although we did have a very good meal in a restaurant recommended by the landlady (the second time we have asked landladies for a good restaurant here in Chile and got a good result). 

Punta Arenas - January 7th

Before we ate the previous night we investigated renting bikes for today.  Dorota got the idea from the bus journey into town where it seemed like the whole town was out cycling.  It turned out to be fairly easy, with a bike shop only a few blocks away being reasonably cheap.  So after buying a picnic lunch in the local supermarket, we got our bikes and headed off for the local forest park.

The park turned out to be situated on a hill above the town, near the ski slopes.  Though we had become better cyclists in Vietnam, we were still not good enough for this climb, especially as it was on gravel roads.  After about 45 minutes going up we decided to skip the forest and head back down for a more gentle cycle along the coast.  We decided to go south, and we were rewarded with a nice paved road along a scenic stretch of coast dotted with little fishing villages. We cycled for a while until we came to a stretch of beach we could access and sit down at for our picnic, which were our usual cheese and ham sandwiches with some peppers, and an apple.

After lunch we cycled back toward town and north, to see what that side of the coast looked like, stopping to take a few photos in the centre.  It didn’t look like much, after a while it began to get quite industrialised, so we stopped and headed back to town.  As we had the bikes we went to an edge of town shopping centre to see how it looked compared to the centre of town.  This was much more modern and had all the usual stores.  Being on bikes we couldn’t really buy anything.  So all we could do is continue cycling around the town taking photos of the sights.

After giving back the bikes we rested for a while at our hostel, and then we went out for dinner with a Polish girl that we had met the previous day on the bus across the border.  We went to a Chilean diner, where I had a national dish, a Barros Luco (which is basically a steak and cheese sandwich) and Dorota had another national dish, the Lomito Pobre (which is basically a steak with an egg on it).  Not very adventurous dishes, but very nice, especially with pints of local lager.

Punta Arenas - January 6th

Today the alarm went off at 04:10 as we had to be up for our 05:00 bus to Punta Arenas in Chile.  Despite the early hour it is still bright when we get up, as it was when we went to bed at 10:30 last night.  In fact we have never seen Ushuaia in the dark because of the long days at this time of year.  The initial leg of our journey is to the other big town on the island, Rio Grande.  This 3 hour leg is characterised by the fact that the bus is freezing.  Really cold.  Despite the fact that we are wrapped up warm in preparation for such a possibility, our feet are really suffering.  But there isn’t that much we can do about it.

When we get to Rio Grande the bus station is chaotic.  It turns out you have to fill in all your border paperwork here.  Why they didn’t give it to us to fill in on the bus is a mystery.  But there are queues everywhere, most of which contain people who don’t even know why they are queuing.  A few instructional posters would have been nice.  Adding to the confusion is that there are so many people travelling they have put on a second bus, and therefore old seat numbers no longer apply.

Once we get underway the rest of the journey is pretty ordinary, the scenery out the window is the same all the time.  It is sort of like travelling through the world’s largest links golf course.  The Argentinean border is a quick stop, but the Chilean one is painfully slow.  There are a couple of buses ahead of us, and it takes over an hour to do them.  When they get to us three of our fellow travellers haven’t read the rules about importing fruit into Chile, and get caught, so our bus gets delayed another hour for them to fill out extra paperwork.  It’s very frustrating.  I can’t understand how people can ignore the posters on the wall.

For the rest of the journey again the landscape is the same, save for the 15 minutes when we cross the Straits of Magellan on a little ferry.  It’s a welcome break.  We finally reach Punta Arenas at 20:00, and after quickly checking into our hostel, we head for some food.  And here we find an amazingly good French influenced restaurant.  We finish eating at about 22:30, and head to bed, although it is still bright outside.  This probably explains why there were still people only arriving into the restaurant at that time.  The lateness at which people eat here is something we still have to get used to.