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