Patagonia

Ushaia - the town at the end ..

Two for the price of one - cormorant and sea lion
Skiing at the end of the world

The Perito Moreno glacier - 60metres high, xyz long (but where`s the polar bear and fox)?

Blowing Off - A Right Whale snapped from a clifftop.
An upside down Elephant Seal

I`m convinced our planned trips will be great, Sam is convinced she`s not keen on mountain bikes - we therefore set off out of Puerto Madryn on mountain bikes to see whales from the beach with mixed feelings. True to form though the planned trip wasn´t planned at all - and after the outbound 16km uphill on a busy industrial road, then on an unmade gravel one, then along the beach, and finally up steep sand dunes by the cliff and through evil thorn bushes - I felt a little guilty about my promises of "it`ll be great".

At the first sighting of the whales on the beach we scrambled for the cameras. After the sixtieth picture of whales had been snapped we realised that they weren`t going away. We saw some great sites (successfully missed photographing most), and in conclusion - Sam still isn´t keen on mountain bikes, but agreed that the day was good - not the most decisive conclusion!

The next day we hired a car for the short sprint around Peninsular Valdés (ourselves and the couple we`d met on the Bolivian Salar de Uyuni tour). As the best driver, I was nominated to do the driving ....... or as the only one with my driving licence on me I was the muppet nominated to do all the driving (forget which).

The beauty of Patagonia is in it`s enormous open endless barrenness - probably. On the positive side the driver can see all the passing scenery (as there´s not much for the driver to do on long straight roads). On the other hand, there´s no scenery to see either - so we sped happily out to the national park on the peninsular. (Anywhere tourists are told they want to go that isn`t a town is rapidly promoted to become a national park. Because it`s a national park there`s a stinging entrance fee for anyone from overseas).

It wasn´t long before we realised that short sprint journeys in Argentina are the equivalent of driving from London to Manchester where, past the Watford gap, the road turns into nasty gravel tracks. As we reached the gravel track we continued to speed happily on, all except for the driver, who became a little nervous. "Many cars turn over on the gravel roads, don`t speed, don`t turn sharply, don`t brake too hard". As it became clear we weren`t going to be back in daylight then, like on the tarmac, we found ourselves doing a little over twice the speed limit (and everyone in the car became a little nervous). From the noises of stones and small animals hitting the side of the car we thought either our deposit - or the car itself - may be written off. Happily on returning it, despite the meticulous note taking of tiny scratches when the hire car was taken out, they only glanced at it - same the world over then.

Stop number one on the peninsular was to see every animal that`s ever existed in the area, all smiling and waving to tourists - but stuffed and sitting in the park entry centre. Stop number two was at Punta Delgado where we saw lots of elephant seals wallowing in their large blubber. Stop number three we saw two small penguins by our feet (on tourist shift) and some much bigger penguins on the beach miles away. At the final stop (Punta Norte) we tried not to trip over an Armadillo that persistently enquired about some tourist food.

From Puerto Madryn we took the bus out to Bariloche. Another fifteen hour bus journey - but the buses are many times nicer than National Express. Barrioche is a "Swiss" stlye skiing town with log cabins and chocolate famous throughout Argentina. It`s in the Lake District and there were fantastic views of mountains and lakes surrounding the town.

Arriving exhausted at the bus station we were picked up by Mr and Mrs Very Nice and driven into town. Immediately leaving their car we were picked up by Mr Enthusiastic who enthusiastically showed us a nice apartment in the centre (two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, living room) for a tenner (where we stayed for the next ten days).

On the two and a bit days where we didn`t get up late, eat a leisurely breakfast at our dinner table watching a premiership match on our cable TV (or early edition Changing Rooms with a smiling Carole Smillie (Mi casa, tu casa)) before going for a stroll to the supermarket, waving hello to the postman and commenting on how quickly Pedro`s children were growing up .... then we were very busy indeed.

One of our busy days we popped out to Cerro Otto, a rotating restaurant at the top of a mountain - reached via a cable car. We nursed our two hot chocolates for four hours - only leaving after it became apparent we`d exhausted the views and were comparing our timings for how long it was taking for us to rotate the full 360 degrees (18m 50s).

Another day was spent skiing at Cerro Catedral (the largest skiing resort in the Southern Hemisphere (blah)). The skiing was good - too much snow meant the drag lift wires were about neck height and some of the chair lifts couldn`t open. No clouds, no wind, hot sunshine and beautiful views.

On the last day we took local buses as far as possible around Circuito Chico - which was to the 5* Llao Llao Hotel. It`s one of the hotels that I`m sure appears in the Sunday Times supplement for a ten day break for six zillion pounds.

Anyway - apart from these days we took it very easy in Bariloche.

Our spending thus far hadn`t been monstrously too far off our budget, so later on that same day we paid for our flights from Bariloche to El Calafate and also the Navimag ferry from the bottom of Chile to the middle of Chile. After this our budget was a complete waste of time and we may as well have booked ourselves into the Llao Llao hotel for a champagne spa massage and a week in the plaza suite.

El Calafate, described in the book as expensive and unpleasant was certainly expensive and had nothing to offer suffice being the nearest town to the Perito Moreno glacier (60 meters high, 4.5 km wide, 642 square km, 2 million years old (blah). The dozen or so adjoined glaciers, including Perito Moreno, form the 3rd largest ice body in the world (according to some random web site I`ve just checked)).

In El Calafate, the morning of our glacier trip, we squinted into the sun, slapped on some sun cream and took plenty of water. As we neared the national park entry gate and got our wallets out we also neared the snowy blizzard blowing around the glacier. Driving past the first three viewing points in the cloud, our suncream precautions seemed slightly ridiculous.

Anyway, the clouds cleared, the boat trip up to the north face was very good and the viewing balconies of the south face were equally so. Again the photos miss the grandeur of the place - especially when they all have snow flakes on the camera lens. Another event almost impossible to catch on camera are the huge blocks of ice that crash into the lake every so often. Very impressive.

Full of good intentions to bus it all the way down to the large island of Tierra Del Fuego - and the town of Ushuaia at the end of it - the convincing man at the ticket office sold us our plane tickets. All thoughts of the colourful pretty town at the end of the world took a sidestep as we walked around the electronics shops and internet cafes and took in the town that could be in the middle of anywhere.

The Argentinians say Ushuaia is the most southerly town in the world - the Chileans say the second most southerly (after Puerto Williams, a military base in Chile). We were upset at possibly not being in the town at the end of the world until someone said `cheer up, it`s not the end of the world` (then we just got upset at him and his rubbish humour). Either way some miserable spoiler had written in the hostel book that places in Scotland are further north than Ushuaia is south (55 degrees).

Ushuaia sits on the Beagle channel and is otherwise nestled by snowy mountains. We only had a short time before rushing to do nothing over the boarder in Chile - so like right slackers we didn´t visit the Tierra Del Fuego national park. Instead, another day skiing (which was fantastic - despite there only effectively being two lifts on the site).

The next day we took a 4hr boat trip out into the beagle channel. It was a small chuggy boat which could get close to land, so we nudged up to sea lions, king cormorants, other cormorants and more sea lions all on various rocky islands.

Leaving Ushuaia we caught an 11 hour bus and boat trip back to the mainland and into Chile. The Chileans are very particular that no meat, fruit, veg or other animal products are brought into their country. We arrived at the border around lunchtime, filled in the required forms stating we had no such food, and shortly after the border we all tucked into our illegal cheese sandwiches.

We arrived into Chile to Punto Arenas ... and the next day left on the early bus to Puerto Natales. There wasn`t a great deal there either, but it`s the nearest town to the Torres Del Paine national park, also it`s the starting point for the northern passage of the Navimag ferry to Puerto Montt.

At the gate to the Torres Del Paine national park the Torres themselves are visible - so we needn`t have paid the large entrance fee. The Torres are three granite towers that rise 2500 metres vertically and represent the second hardest rock faces to climb in the world (apparently). The hardest is Mount Fitzroy - which is just across the border back in Argentina.

There`s lots of hardcore trekking that can be done in the park, and we could certainly appreciate that from our seats on our one day excursion on the minibus. Having seen the torres, we went on to see a milky green waterfall (mineral rich from the glaciers), plenty of `blue` icebergs, a lot of guanaco (from the camal family), and a fair few Nuando`s (roadrunners from the cartoon). We were exhausted at the end of the drive.

The next day we boarded the Navimag ferry and had an intensely relaxing time for three days (four nights) sailing through Chilean fjords. Our exercise was in the form of eating large breakfasts, lunches and dinners - other than this we mostly looked at the scenery, read in the sunshine on deck, drank a little wine and a little beer and watched some films at night.

Arriving in Puerto Montt we immediately left for the Island of Chilòe. Thus far in Chile we had an impression of fairly prosperous people who are a little ugly (especially when compared to the rest of South America). In Argentina they eat cows like Smarties, but there aren`t many bloaters. In Chile they eat fish - lots of fish, but the people are slightly more rotund (and squat). Also Chilean towns give the impression of being patched together with buildings made of colourful corrugated iron, some bricks, wood, plastic sheeting - but mostly colourful corrugated iron. Chilòe our guidebook told us was different ... `a mystical place of legends and spells`.

In Castro (the capital of Chilòe) we were greeted by burly squat Chileans living in ram shackled houses of colourfully painted corrugated iron. We ate fish, lots of it, and noticed we were a little bigger of girth than previously. (This could have been the feeding regime the boat and not the fish).

We left Castro the next day and moved to Vildavia (in the Chilean lake district - though close to the sea). The highlights of Vildavia were the sea lions that lounged around the fish market and the botanical gardens - both of which, though interesting, couldn`t sustain us too long so we left again the next day for Santiago.
Not wanting to spoil the delights of Santiago until nearer our flying out date we caught a bus on arrival to take us over the boarder and back to Argentina and Mendoza.

Now we`re in Mendoza and having a lovely relax after all those buses and after all the relaxing on the boat.