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.