Uruguay

After about a month of freezing Patagonian winter we decided to make a move up north in hopes fo encountering some warmer weather. We had a quick stop in both Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires before leaping across the river to Uruguay, where we have now spent just over a week.

From Buenos Aires we took a ferry to Colonia del Sacramiento, a beautiful old city of narrow cobblestone streets, low houses with worn paint that shows the passing of time, and plazas surrounded by citrus trees - a picture perfect wee town in other words. Since we arrived on Sunday when the towns in these parts are almost completely shut down as the day is reserved for religion and family, we spent our day just walking around and enjoying the sun.

The next morning we hopped into a rackedy old bus towards the capital, Montevideo. There we found ourselves a nice wee hostel just out of the center, which had the most amazing supermarket around the corner. Sounds lame, I know, but after months of travelling and eating the same old pasta and rice with white bread and not being able to find a lot of things it was like heaven walking to this supermarket that had just about everything you could imagine! After an amazing luch we went to explore the ciudad vieja, which was nice but didn´t quite compare to the perfection of Colonia. Back by the hostel we stumbled upon a market where we spent a few hours admiring the local crafts.

The next day we were on the go yet again, this time on our way to Punta del Diablo, a very small town on the coast of Uruguay near the Brasilian border. When we arrived the darkness of the night had already settled over the town, and with no street lights it was just about pitch black. Not so smartly, we hadn´t really found out where the hostel was, but we did know there was only one here open during winter. With no people around it was impossible to ask direction, so we decided to head towards the beach hoping that we would stumble upon the hostel, which luckily we did only after about 10minutes of wondering in the dark.

Stepping into the hostel was like stepping into another world, here we were thinking we´d be just about the only people staying here in tranquility, but instead stepped into what seemed like a raging party in a packed hostel! Turned out though that the hostel is also the only pub open here over winter, so it was packed with locals having a few beers and getting roudy. Luckily that turned out to be the biggest night of the week and we have been able to enjoy a bit of tranquility as well.

We have spent almost a week here now, and don´t seem to feel like moving. For once we actually feel like we are on holiday, waking up late to a perfect sunny day each day, and doing not much at all but reading a book in a hammock, strolling on the beach or fishing (unsuccessfully unfortunately...). Brett has been enjoying the surf which has been good just about every day as well, though the water is freeeeezing as I discovered after one day of practising my rusty skills and loosing my breath in the icy water - will wait to be in warmer waters for more practise, I don´t know how the boys do it!

I think we will find ourselves wondering around the dirt streets of this town for a few more days before we head back to the complete opposite of Buenos Aires with its busy streets and millions of people where we will spend our last week in South America.

Bariloche

After all the whale spotting on the coast we headed towards the mountains in hopes for snow, but arriving to Bariloche and seeing the mountain tops with merely a few patches of the white stuff quickly wiped away our dreams of champagne powder. The weather was cold, but nowhere cold enough for snow, so instead of snowboarding we decided to go for a hike to a refugio, ironically so near the skifield that the trek started from the base of the same mountain.

The hike was pretty easy, and probably not the most exciting, untill we got closer to the refugio which lies by a frozen lagoon hugged by mountains all around. But that´s not all - you could rent ice skates at the refugio and go skating on the lagoon!! We were out there like two children for hours untill the darkness started to set upon us and we had to give our toes a rest. The ice was perfectly smooth and with nobody else on this amazing ice skating rink surrounded by mountains we felt pretty spoilt, once again.

The following day we returned to Bariloche where we ended up spending a week just relaxing and visiting a few sites.

Photos

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Puerto Madryn

Whales was what we went to see. Whales is what we saw. It was ridiculous.

If some one said theres a place in the world where ther is literally hundreds of whales splashing around in a harbour like seagulls amongst the yaughts and boats, we wouldnt have beleived them.

BUt this is what puerto madryn is for the months of june to september, we were treated to this amazing display of southern right whales and orcas along with sea lions and the freakist looking sea elephants.

On the first night there we decided to stroll down and get an ice cream in 12 degrees as you do in Argentina (where ice cream is the best in the world), the lady at our hostel said are you going whale spotting, in a joking way, and we thought she WAS joking.. until i spotted some whales immediately, and petra thought i was being stupid, until i made us woalk down to the city wharf, and oooh look 2 metres away where like 3 whales having a bit of adult time right there in the water..

the next day we rented a car with an aussie couple that we met along the way, and it was a great couple of days. we rented a cabin in Puerto Piramides, a tiny town on the Valdes Peninsula, days were spent doing burn outs in the rental VW gol, cooking blues cheese pasta sauce, minus mushrooms, which are impossible to find somtimes, drinking the finest cask wine in the world (NZ$1.50 per litre .75 euro cents) spotting marine life, and me getting all scientific reading what it said in the brochures, and signs.

High light of the trip was forget the whales, magestic sea giants, when we spotted/ almost ran over in the rental an armadillo, which i have been searching for since the far north of argentina!!!! I must say it didnt vanish into the sand in 5 seconds like the signs said. Similar to a seal diving into water?!

Patagonia

Patagonia truly is a world of its own. We have seen some of the most amazing things in our travel in just a few weeks here.

As we arrived to Puerto Natales the sky was grey, a drizzle of icy rain was falling on us and there was literally nobody around. We wondered the deserted streets in search for accomodation, which didn´t seem so hard as pretty much every second house was a hostel, hospedaje, hotel etc. - but at this time of the year we found most of them closed. After a while we did manage to find a warm place to put our bags down and settle for the next few days.

The plan was to hike around Paque National Torres del Paine, but after counting upthe cost of staying in the refugios along the trail (a total rip of!!!) and considering the weather which was meant to clear, then get worse for the rest of the week we decided to - crindgingly - to take a tour for one day instead...But, it turned out to be possibly one of the best decions of our trip with quarter of the price we got to see all the sights and more importantly sit inside a warm van... Sounds lame, but as we got to the park the cold we thought we had already got a bit used to intensified by god knows how many degrees - and more importantly the wind, oh the wind...it was howling frozen air at us at around the speed of 90km per hour, just unbeleivable. As we stopped to do a 30min ´hike´, two local ladies in the bus told us to watch out for the ´dangerous wind´ - we had wee giggle and headed up the track, yes it was a bit windy but we felt pretty confident.

Well, around the corner we experienced what they were talking about...the wind was something we could´ve never imagined, we had to literally hold on to each other to be able to keep walking forward, which we did pretty much horizontally. The wind blew right through us and stuck to our bones with a coldness impossible to get rid of for the rest of the day. Gosh were we glad we did not decide to hike for four days in that!!

Torres del Paine ( or ´Pain as we were refering to it after a while...) was definately a place worth seeing, although the wind was something I would not be hoping to experience again.. Unfortunately the day we were there the mountains were hidden most of the day behind dark, moody clouds, but their gloomy presence was still truly something worth witnessing. Arriving back to Puerto Natales, frozen to the bone, we decided to head to El Calafate the next morning ready to wave goodbye to Chile for now.

Arriving to El Calafate was like stepping into yet another world. The sun was shining, it was warm, we got a hostel for half the price of Chile and walked around the supermarket in awe of all the good food that was now affordable to us - we were so happy to back in Argentina! On the down side we had forgotten how hard anything to do with banks, post, information etc. was here. Despite the fact that we were only a few hours from the Chilean border it was almost impossible to exchange Chilean pesos - which we couldn´t do untill the third day there when we got to the only exchange place that accepted them at the right time (ie. not too early - pre 10am, not during siesta 12-4pm, or not too late after 5pm)and changed our chilenos at a shocking rate, but what do you do...

From El Calafate we visited the famous Perito Moreno glacier - which I wasn´t really that excited about to be honest, but which turned out to be one of my favourite places. The glacier was like a living, moving piece of art. It was bitterly cold (well we were right infront of a glacier in the winter) with a wall of icy air hovering around the huge mass of ice infront of us, but that didn´t keep us from marvelling at it for a few hours on end. The face of the glacier rises to the height of 50feet, and it is constantly braking away from pieces the size of a snowball to its huge towers - and speaking of which...we were standing infront of the glacier with the camera set perfectly, ready snap a postcard shot of the breaking ice in mid air for about an hour untill the cold finally got the better of us and reluctantly we put the camera away and turned to walk away when - you guessed it - two of the huge towers right in the middle of the face of the glacier went crashing down creating a thunderous noise and a few foot high waves in the lake infront of it...a few swearwords might have escaped from our frozen lips...

The next step of discovering Patagonia for us was the small settlement of El Chalten, tucked into a valley with the Fitzroy or Chalten mountain watching over it. This was a cute mountain village with log cabins, St. Berhards, a mouth watering bakery and most importantly of course - amazing scenery and walks.

From here we were able to do some amazing day hikes, which we got to enjoy in perfect sunny - though very very cold - weather. The first day we did only a short 2h walk to a waterfall near the town, but the next two days were really the ones to remeber - the first of which was to the Fitzroy itself, a tough climb but oh so rewarding when you got to the top and had the whole mountain range open up infront of your eyes. We were also lucky enough to spot condors and woodpeckers on our way up before we got to a lake which was completely frozen with the mountain standing at the other end of it. There was nobody else around and we got to enjoy it in complete serenity, well untill Brett couldn´t resist the temptation and had to start chucking rocks on the ice to try and break it...what do they say about boys again? Well, it was truly beautiful.

The next morning we set out for yet another trek, this time to the other side of the Fizroy range and to a frozen lagoon which had a glacier faling into it and one of teh Torres of Fizroy at the other end of. So yes, a somewhat similar scenery to theprevious days one, but this was just not something you could get sick of. We had a very welcome cup a soup and sandwiches by the lagoon, although it was almost too cold to sit still and eat, but not a bad view for lunch. On the way back the sun had finally made its way over the mountains and it was much more pleasant with its warming rays guiding our way.




Torres del Paine and Guanacos



Patagonian isolation






Perito Moreno








Mt. Fitzroy/Chalten






Laguna Torre