Patagonia

OK, so I think that I left off with us travelling down to Patagonia. That was a pretty dull journey - 30 hours of planes, trains and automobiles and all that. Highlight was the bus from Iguazu to Buenos Aires which was properly luxurious: enormous lazy-boy style seating with only about 12 of them on the top deck, seats that reclined almost to horizontal, good movies, vermouth...

Hostel life:

We arrived in El Calafate, Argentina to find a small town in the middle of a freezing, barren landscape. Utterly charmless, the place consisted almost entirely of tourist agencies, camping shops and hostels. Monotony punctuated by the occasional extortionate restaurant. Naturally, we stayed a few days to soak it up.

Actually we did stay a few days but only because it´s so easy to be lazy. Plus, discounting treking in the Andes (which was restricted due to weather and budget), the one thing that we wanted to do there was fully booked for a few days. So we spent our time engaging with hostel living. As a first experience of mixed dorms on this trip it was overall positive. I´d imagined it would be a all awkward with hairy Germans emerging from the shower, half-heartedly clutching towels and apologising for shaking the bed as they flashed their nuts while climbing into the upper bunk. On the contrary, in our 4 person dorm Lena stated from the outset that she wasn´t big on clothes and proceeded to indulge us with regular flashes (stop me if I sound like a dirty old man) of her birthday suit. And Chris, sleeping above me, was amiable enough (and smooth as an eel) though he did fight in his sleep. Yeah I know that wasn´t his fault.

Dalek:

As well as sleeping we made extensive use of the kitchen facilities and booked our way out of there. We also went for a long walk round Lake Argentina (biggest lake in South America or something like that) and saw an armadillo. Brilliant - that 10 seconds of fawna was worth the trip to Calafate alone - couldn´t catch it though as they actually skuttle quite fast.

Jeff the nature lover:

The one excursion that we managed from Calafate was out to the Perito Merino glaciar. This is the most popular tourist attraction in the area and there were innumerate different tours running from Calafate. We went with an 'alternative tour' which claimed to take a little-used back road to the National Park (so as to encounter more wildlife en route) and a more adventurous path up to the glaciar. Crammed in a tiny bus with 18 others we set out in the rain at 7am.

It´s amazing how excitable some people get at the prospect of seeing animals. One of the selling points of the tour was that they would stop the bus, if asked, for wildlife so we could take photos / throw stones etc. I have to say that this offer was abused. We stopped for condors - of course we stopped for condors - who wouldn´t want to get out and enjoy close-up the beauty of a massive (1m tall with a 3m wingspan), flying predator gorging itself on carrion and eyeing you lasciviously. We also stopped for hawks, geese, an unusual breed of chicken, rabbits (twice!), suckling lambs, a docile fox, and even, a robin red breast. Now, I admit I took a photo of the robin and the bunnies weren´t your average European sort, they were massive. But lambs! and a fox!

The fox was towards the end and nature fever was at it´s most virulent by that point. So after it was spotted by an old Australian fellow called Jeff it took him a while to actually spit out the word "fox", he just sat there prodding at the window pane and gasping hysterically. Then we had to reverse about 400m along the highway to get back to it so that Jeff could dismount and take an extended video of it slinking, miserably away looking disturbed. Jeff was a 'colourful character'. (Everyone understands when I say that that I mean he was an tosser, right?). From the outset of the trip he was overbearing, boisterous and unwelcome - he gave an almost constant commentary sometimes speaking over the tour guide to get his "point" across...

"G'day, Jeff's the name. Beautiful day for this little trip of ours right? Where are you from darlin'? (not to me) Ah, yeah, this is the life... Condor, there's a condor stop the bus, back up, back up, oh he's gone, what a beauty... We don't mind a little bit of rain do we... Rabbit! Rabbit! Rabbit! Stop the bus, there he goes, big one, watch him run. Bang! Bang! Down he goes, what a beauty, did you see his ears? Bang, there goes another. Rabbit soup... Some good Patagonian sheep over there bet they'll be tasty, and look at the lambs, not long for this world, can we stop the bus? Gahhh, ah, ah. Fox! Fox! Fox! Back up. Stop the bus." And so on and so forth. All day.

Cold as ice:

We got to the national park eventually and spent a couple of hours treking to the glaciar (hence the relentless photos with it getting progressively larger). Was pretty chilly but so impressive that it was worth every moment of frozen fingers and wet trousers (not like that - it was raining). Also got through our sandwiches - in trying to make delicious tuna, sweetcorn mayo on granary we had somehow ended up with sardines, creamed corn on rye. Foul. Last time I let James do the shopping.

I reckon the most impressive thing about the glaciar is its progression. It moves at 2 metres per day in the middle and is more than 200 metres tall (though 3/4 of this is underwater). As it moves and reshapes you constantly hear cracks ripping through the ice. You also see chunks the size of a house toppling off the front into the water with an enormous splash - to bob about briefly, then settle and float away.

Photos from El Calafate and Perito Merino here:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.6gy0zv0y&x=1&y=7the87

Gratuitous nudity:

We went across to Puerto Natales, Chile, the next day. Much nicer place - small port with probably just as many tourist agencies and camping shops but a more relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Fewer hardcore trekers strutting around looking ripped and talking about being at the end of the world. Better seafood in Chile too so we treated ourselves to a couple of nice meals out. Average price of a 2 course dinner with wine, per person, is about 6 pounds each. But you get used to spending so little that in the event that feels quite expensive.

Hostel didn't disappoint either with lovely friendly staff, good facilities and a girl called Hannah from Lancashire in our room who almost seemed to be allergic to her clothes. While she did sleep in pyjamas, her efforts to be discrete when changing into and from them were lacadaisical. As a gentleman I naturally avert my eyes but then there's another part of me saying that this is a repressed British response to nudity and if someone is happy to stand virtually naked in front of me, look at me and engage me in conversation, then I should really look back at them. I compromised by lifting my eyes when I knew she was in at least her underwear. Then feeling that this might be too obvious an attempt to overcome repression I waited until she was packing her bag and munching on some toast with jam and gave her the full monty.

Camping:

One of the reasons for heading down to Patagonia was to do some hiking and camping in the Andes. So we rented the gear, put most of our other stuff in storage, made enough food to last for a couple of days and headed off into a the national park Torres del Paine.

You can spend weeks treking in the park round various different routes... 'The circuit', 'The W'... and taking in different valleys and mountains. Most people work some route around views of 'The Horns' which are kind of emblematic of the park (Torres = Horns). Rationalising that a couple of days was probably enough to get the general feel for camping in the snow, eating tuna-rice from a plastic bowl and crapping like bears in the woods we just set ourselves the target of one of the arms of 'The W'. By working it a little we´d be able to check out the rear of the horns on the first day and the front on the second.

Walked for about 9 hours on the first day including two fairly strenuous climbs, one of which turned out to be up the side of one of the Torres though we didn´t know this at the time. We didn´t make the top of it and after a couple of hours climbing the going became too dangerous (I´d started imagining international headlines like "British backpacers killed in landslide" and local versions like "Idiot tourists ruin Torres and kill themselves in the process"). About 50 metres from the summit we beat a hasty retreat with loose rubble and shale skipping past us.

My knee gave up after that and I hobbled back to camp for the tuna mung and bed on the frozen floor of the tent. Awoke shivering and aching as snow fell on our tent and cursed the chap in the camping shop who had laughed at us when we suggested that 4 season sleeping bags might be better than 3. With ongoing knee pain I didn't manage to hike up to the front of the Torres and it was all I could do to make it down to the base where the bus back to Natales departed. Was all very pretty though and worth the effort to get out into nature and the perpetually changing weather and landscape.

Photos from Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine here:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.7arv8j9u&x=1&y=-iryjxz

The next day we got on the boat for the cruise up the coast of Chile.

Photos - Uruguay and Iguazu

Managed to get the photos uploaded - here they are for anyone who is interested...

Uruguay:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.9ps89eq2&x=1&y=-9zu4zr

Iguazu Falls:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.affq3kfm&x=1&y=-7w2cac

In other news I´m now in Pucon in Chile. Things are increasingly slipping. It´s now more than 3 weeks since I last washed my hair and I have a 2 week beard (pretty scrappy but I reckon I can get it up to woodcutter standard in another couple of weeks). Some weeks ago I had a mental battle on the issue of personal cleanliness and decided that I´ll probably always be the sort of person who showers daily. Doesn´t feel like the day has started until you´ve freshened up. However, I also concluded that 16 hours is an arbitrary limit for the life of clean underwear and in non-sweaty climates it´s perfectly acceptable to wear socks and pants for longer periods. Am pretty determined, at this stage, that this won´t breach the 3 day mark.

News from Patagonia later.

Uruguay and Iguazu Falls

Hola,

So it looks like the photo plan might have broken down a little as moving away from Buenos Aires and taking more than 3 photos per day has created a problem in that it takes an eternity to upload them on a slow connection. Am beginning to question the wonders of modern technology. Surely I should be able to transmit images straight into the brains of my friends and family from a hand-held device that looks a bit like an iPod but is kind of a pale blue colour with a smaller dial.

So if you´re tuning in for photos (and who the hell wouldn´t be on the back of last time´s magical tour through Buenos Aires) I´m afraid the slide-show will be delayed a couple of weeks. I got 20 up there earlier but it took an hour and a half and then the pc crashed and I lost it all. Besides, the internet caf that I´m sitting in is playing Careless Whisper on repeat and it makes me want to ralph My spanish isn´t yet up to telling the man that if he doesn´t change the track I´ll lose my sanity and he´ll simultaneously lose my custom and maybe one of his monitors through the front window.

It´s now 2 weeks since leaving Buenos Aires. I feel considerably more human but am increasingly missing the place. In hindsight, it would have been good to finish the trip there -probably why Rahul was in such good form.


Uruguay - The Switzerland of South America.

They say that Uruguay is the Switzerland of South America. Well, the people at Lonely Bastard do anyhow. Don´t know why, it´s fairly poor and doesn´t have any mountains. I tried in vain to buy schnapps. Actually, there was quite a bit of Stella Artios knocking about - nothing draught though so I didn´t bother. I prefer Kronenberg anyway.

Colonia:

We went to Colonia del Sacramento and stayed in a lovely hostel for 2 pounds per night. Great showers again, they really do have great showers in South America - as long as you don´t drink the water from them. Colonia is full of Americans on package tours wondering among the cobbled streets and colourful old buildings declaring it all "marvelously quaint" and getting in the way when I wanted to take photos of the old buildings. We originally intended to spend a night there and then head along the coast to the deserted beaches eastwards but the pace of living in Colonia was too fine... so we just hung about for 4 days killing time in the town, researching our next move and wondering along the beaches.

Jimbo picked up (not like that) a Manchunian called Tim who looked about 40 but was actually only 26. He talked enthsiastically about the Hacienda and steak. Was a pretty nice guy - appears in some of the photos of the derelict bullring that we found up the coast when walking one afternoon.

I picked up a few travel injuries. Nothing serious just some blistered feet and bites but enough to make me feel hardy.

Everywhere we went we were followed by stray dogs pattering along behind us or more annoyingly stopping in front or trying to accompany us into shops. Really passive animals, most of which seemed to be missing at least one foot or leg. Maybe most tourists only stay there such a short time that the dogs don´t come to recognise them but because we were there a while they took up with us. I dunno.

Montevideo:

After a while we headed over to Montevideo intending to stay there a night and get the overnight bus up to the Iguazu Falls the following evening in time to be there to meet Rahul, Tom and Dan (visiting Rahul from London) on the Sunday. We´d booked the hostel and all and the travel down to Patagonia from there on the following Tuesday and Rahul had all our tickets for that and other stuff such as the boat cruise, flights in Brazil. Understandably we were disappointed to discover upon arrival in Montevideo that no such bus route existed.

Back in Argentina:

Travel arse:

Some hasty replanning and we were booked on a bus 3 hours later to Santa Fe in Agrentina where it seemed more likely that we´d be able to get on a route to Iguazu. 9 hours after that at 4am we arrived. Found a kiosk in the station where they promised a 6pm service to Iguazu but couldn´t offer us tickets until 7 am so we wondered off, jaded, to find a hostel to bed down in for 12 hours. My feet hurt. We struggled through the red light district trying not to watch the hookers being picked-up or abused by bands of local men, trying not to look at the locals who seemed, through the travel exhaustion, to be drunk and hostile.

After much hassle we found ourselves booked on a bus for 5.45 - not the previously promised services which was full. Sitting on the bus it took us a full half an hour to realise that we were the only passengers. What was more, the driver and the co-driver were playing rock music loud and singing and the co-driver was egging the driver on to go faster and overtake on blind bends. The bus seemed awfully shiny and new. When we finally stopped for food I inquired about the lack of passengers and discovered that it wasn´t actually in service and they were heading to Brazil to start a new route but were going to drop us off on the way. Bit of luck otherwise we´d never have got to Iguazu. So I took the front of the top deck and Jimbo took the back.

Iguazu turd:

Stepping off the bus into the bright day we stood in the bus terminal and I read about transport options to our hostel. Several metres above me a massive pigeon shuffled along a girder and liberally shat down my left shoulder, arm and across my guide book. Not much you can do but laugh - that was what everyone nearby was doing anyhow and it´s supposed to be quite auspicious isn´t it? I thought maybe it was payback for the good fortune of the bus journey. We´d moved out of the way and I looked up just in time to see the fat sod shuffle across, take aim and drop another load across my rucksack. In my haste I´d neglected to shift it. Not sure what that was payback for.

The hostel was lovely with a big pool and ping pong, table tennis, pool, hammocks. We had a dorm to the 5 of us with private bathroom but a broken shower (boo). Rahul and the others showed up a bit later and we spent the late afternoon and evening having some drinks and making best use of all the facilities. Put in an early night to prepare for the big day at the falls.

Incredible:

Monday - probably the best day of the trip so far, I´ve never seen a natural phenomena as awesome. The falls are several hundred metres wide and about fifty metres high, set in the middle of a lush national park that has formed around them. We were kind of lucky as there had been floods earlier in the month which meant that the volume of water pouring over the ledge was much greater than usual, almost forming a complete line where usually it would be about 8 different sets of falls. However, the floods had brought down a couple of bridges so there were parts of the park that we couldn´t access. We wondered round, a little bewildered from the heat and awe, and soaked from standing close to the torrents of water pouring over the ledge. Saw some interesting wildlife, most notably a strange, dancing, half rodent half pig which evaded our attempts at capture. Could have made a packet with him on the southbank.

Wet t-shirt competition:

We left the park in the evening determined to return the next day to do some more walking. It never happened despite having a quiet night time overran us and in the end Jimbo and I had a mad dash to get our bus leaving Rahul, Tom and Dan to head back to the park. I also left behind the small tripod that I bought in Buenos Aires. First casualty of the trip I think.

Two weeks on and Jim and I have also completed the Patagonian leg of the journey. Will write that up when we get further North in Chile. We´re about to jump on a boat up the coast through otherwise inaccessible fjords and glacial lakes / inlets. Perhaps not as plush as it sounds, we just checked in to discover that we´re in a dorm of 22 in the very bowels of the converted car ferry.

Hasta luego (as they say in these parts).

Buenos Aires

OK first entry. Hello hello. Buenos Aires - kapow!

I´ve just spent the last 3 weeks (almost) in Buenos Aires. I guess the beginning was always gonna go one way or the other and I would either escape somewhere quiet to acclimatise or get stuck into the city and enter the travel mindset through familiar city-break style living.

As it turned out the latter was the case and rather than sliding gently into the new culture we nose-dived right to the bottom of a big barrel of red wine and drank our way to the top, or at least drank it to the bottom.
We: Myself, Jimbo, Rahul

The intention on arrival (reading the plans in the rough itinerary that I wrote months ago) was to find somewhere cheap to live and enjoy Argentineann culture while undertaking a language course and meeting new people.

Commendable, I think you´ll agree. And I think that´s kind of what happened. We´ve been to Tango shows, Flamenco, dined out with the locals we´ve met. We lived in an apartment in the centre for two weeks and spent the days ambling round the streets and going to classes in Spanish, eating out and meeting folk for tapas, pool, darts(!), poker, coffee, a beer or two. We´ve been to antiques markets (ok, one antiques market - but several times), many steakhouses, strange clubs, a chess club... However, most of all we´ve spent the last 3 weeks drinking and touring the city´s bars. That and faffing in a sweaty stupor in Internet cafes (there´s one about every 3 yards on every road in Buenos Aires).

It might have been different if Rahul were not there when I arrived but there he was. On the back of 4 months coming down through Central America and South America he seemed pretty settled and intent on really cutting loose. So that´s pretty much what we´ve done - it´s been a relentless and sorry cycle of self-abuse as we pushed ourselves further, harder, later and longer. I´d now have to trawl through the emails that I´ve been sending over the last few weeks to rediscover how I´ve spent the time as I´ve a really fuggled memory of it. All the days blur into about a week and while I can distinguish being in so many curious, different places with random and familiar people, I couldn´t fix the memories to a date or all of the faces with a name. It´s been fun but on some level Rahul must be responsible - his thirst for alcohol and entertainment has been unquenchable.

And another thing - why does everyone think I´m gay? OK so I bought a yellow unbrella. And I didn´t immediately master the art of attracting a waiter´s attention by raising the hand rather than waving it. But I don´t think that´s any reason for such undivided consent on the matter. The only potential pick-up on this holiday so far has been a 41 year old man who isnsited, despite my assertions to the contrary, that my sexuality was dubious. Where are the dusky latino temptresses begging me to salsa with them? I think Rahul and Jimbo have been colluding to secretly tell people I´m gay but not to mention it to me. I´m pretty sure Rahul did that at the language school. Mischevious git.

Anyway, putting that rant aside, I don´t mention all of this boozing as any kind of boast... it´s easy to sit around drinking and getting fat (I´ve gained a chin in the last few weeks and half of the carefully packed clothes no longer fit me - I´m not kidding). Neither is it a cautionary tale because we´ve had a lot of fun. I can´t say that we´ve managed it that well. It´s tough to get into the habit of going out until 4am on week days, being in class for 10 and then sleeping all weekend (in between late nights in clubs).

In hindsight I wish I had applied myself a little more to learning Spanish (they don´t speak too much English here). It would have been good to visit the cemetry in Recoletta where Eva Peron is buried - apparently it´s stunning. Also, we missed out on a Boca game because we were too hung-over. But hey, what can you do when it´s 75p for a decent bottle of red. We reckon we had about 30 each in the 19 days we spent in BA. Yeah. And all in all, I´m not sure that we didn´t actually get the best out of the place. It´s a great city to party in, there are so many different things going on (mostly seeming to revolve around Tango - but that might just have been the people we were hanging around with) but there aren´t exactly hoardes of museums to visit. I think that we landed and started living pretty much as the locals though they seem to handle the late nights a fair bit better - probably because they don´t hit the booze so hard.

Feeling totally ruined we left Buenos Aires, with Rahul in it, on Monday.

Now we´re in Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay which is a pretty little place (UNESCO world heritage site or something similar) and we´re drying up and eating only mixed salads and fruit. I feel a world better. Did some press-ups this morning.

This feels more like the start of the travels proper and we´ve a hell of a lot planned over the next 4 weeks including Iguazu falls, Patagonia, climbing a mountain in the Andes, cruising round the coast of Chile, the Lake District (Chile-Argentine version thereof)...

Thus far it´s not exactly been hardcore, roughing it among jaw-dropping wilderness. And I´m looking forward to that - if you´re not the stereotypical back-packer, braided and tatooed then you´re almost the stereotypical smart-casual tourist with all-seeing camera and frequent expression of "that´s so quaint". I´ll be damned if I´m going to walk some middle ground. So far the closest I´ve come to feeling on the road was in having to get the medical kit out to fix my big toenail after some marauding kid trod on my foot in the main street (Florida) of BA. Toenail split up the middle and needed plastering and antiseptic and all that. Much better now since half of it came off but it struck me as odd that it wasn´t until I had to use a pair of tiny travel scissors, suffer some minor inconvenience, that I realised I wasn´t at home anymore and perhaps should be enjoying further incovenience and hardship and unusual experiences. Having said that, I´m not wishing trials upon myself.

We´re going to Montevideo tomorrow for the first proper adventure of trying to secure onward travel north to the Argentine border with Brazil and Paraguay (maybe more of a challenge than it sounds without much Spanish and as we can´t get any information on busses - not sure there are any). If, in the event, that´s all too easy, well my hair is already becoming shaggy so I´m gonna get a couple of facial piercings then I´ll definitely be like a real traveller (suggestions for tattoos welcome).

Anyway, this blog isn´t supposed to be a place where I write loads, it´s more of an interface through which friends and family can keep broadly in touch with what I´m up to and see the photos. Hmmm.

A couple of notes on the photos:
1/ I still haven´t quite worked out how to use my camera so a few of them are underexposed
2/ I was drunk when I took most of them so a few of them are lopsided and/or blurry
3/ I didn´t take my camera everywhere and have missed some of the more interesting events so most of these photos are dull.
4/ Heading home from a bar one night the light as the sun came up was amazing so I went out and took some photos of the route that I usually took through the city if heading to school or over the Rahul´s apartment. Reviewing them later in the day they had failed to capture the light unfortunately. So I went back out and tried again - hence all of the repetitive photos of Lavalle and Florida. Sorry.

I intend in future to only take interesting photos that Sebastiao Salgado would be proud of. Or maybe Helmut Newton.

If you follow this link then you´ll have to sign in to view the album.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=9s5mjjy.7e9grah6&x=1&y=-5f3hcx

You can even buy the photos if you want! Don´t hold back. And you can post comments on the photos or on this blog (though do remember if you´re making them public that my mother will be accessing it and she´s terribly reserved and delicate).

I hope all are well. Comments and criticisms on words and photos are welcome - don´t sugarcoat it please.
Seriously, just keep in touch.