Date: 25th March
We left the Isle of Chiloe, home of curanto, friendly people and rain like Scotland, and headed out to Bariloche, in Argentina. Having been rained on for roughly 2 weeks, we decided to go east, over the mountains and go into deep south Patagonia. We'd heard of a magical weather system called the "Rain shadow effect" which basically means the Andes cause the clouds from PAcific to drop their rain and snow all over them and by the time they reach the eastern side there's no water left. Great theory. We reached BAriloche after driving through some of the mopst beautiful (if wet) scenery I've ever seen, slopes covered in trees, birds of prey swooping down over the road adn lakes galore. As we finally reached Bariloche the weather had pickjed up slightly and the rain stopped... so we carried on, past the tourist haven of Argentina and onto the tiny hamlet community known as "El Bolson".
For those of you interested "Bolson" is the spanish translation for "Baggins" (see Lord of the Rings!) and of course there was a restaurant "Rivendell". And a few references to my fat, hairy feet, short stature and general lookalikey appearnace to a hobbit.
For those interested in other facts, it's a gorgeous wee town, set in a valley and inhabited by a load of old hippies! You know, alternative living type people. Very nice, friendly, believe in crystal healing etc etc.
Date: 30th March
So, After arriving in the rain in El Bolson, it decides to carry on raining the next day when we want to do some walking. Ah well... didn't stop us. damned fools!
The next day we headed out with the owner of the hostal. For a few dollars he took us out to the Lago Verde (green lake), so called 'cos it's water is green. Very original. From there we tooka wee boat ride around the lake, saw some more mountains and then headed back to town. The guy then dropped us off at the edge of town and told us we should walk up the mountain path to the refugio and burned down forest.
"It's about 10km, 3 hours walk and great views. NOt too hard and you can also visit the forest where the local hippy artists sculpted burnt trees into really cool artwork."
"Ok" thought us. That sounds like a nice walk to do in the sunshine, take in some views of the town etc etc. Little did we know that the walk was 10km directly uphill with constant switchbacks. Of course, we all decided to do different walks. A few km up, Graeme decided to go adventuring in the forest, and then back to town. Gordy decided to go for it and hiked up the road at full pace leaving me behind and happily taking random paths through forests and generally going uphill.
After leaving HobbitTown, we took buses for 2.5 days to get to the far south of Argentina, and see the Moreno Glacier, a huge chunk of ice flowing out of the Andes.
Here's a picture of it ... notice the cool blue colour. When you get to the glacier, you notice first how huge it is, and what amazing blues run through the compacted ice and snow, in bands of compression. And then you hear the sounds - the creaking of thousands of tons of ice crushing into more thousands of tons of ice; and then you see the cathedrals of spires that form the upper layer of the iceberg - huge spears slicing the sky, and between the spires, deep deep blue shadows and refracted light. Its an orgy of the coldest colours you could think of.
Walking down to the observation deck, which runs along the 2km front of the glacier, one starts to see ripples in the lake that the glacier impinges upon; very soon you realise that these ripples are the result of ice falling off the front of the glacier, and when you see one, you wonder how it is that such tiny ice-cubes can make the thunderous noise that you start associating with the ripples in the water. Its not really until you get some scale that you realise - watching the tour boat sail 100m from the glacier, you start to appreciate the 'ice-cubes' falling off are bigger than a double-decker bus; and when you're lucky enough to see whole corners fall off the glacier - well, then you know they're the size of small office blocks, plummeting to the lake, and displacing hundreds of m3 of icy water. Its a stunning site.
And for the fact fans - this is one of the few glaciers still advancing; naughty climate change means that many glaciers are shrinking, and at the time of writing there had been a massive break in the Antarctic ice-shelf because of this. The glacier is about 35km long, 2km wide and a fair few hundred metres deep into the lake. As it advances across the lake, it eventually cuts off one side of the lake from the other. Over a year or so, the smaller side of the lake rises in volume as water pours in from the feed rivers, until the pressure of the rising water crashes through the glacier front - supposedly a spectacular sight. This cycle should repeat itself every 4 years, but changing climate has meant that the last time this happened was the end of the 1980s. That's all our fault. Oops.
I'm sure it ain't my fault, the only greenhouse gases I remember producing are after friday nights and curries! But anyway, enough environmental catastrophes and onto Patagonia proper.
After several longish (12hours) bus rides, a 12 hour wait for a transfer in the dullest port town in South Aamerica and a long slog of a ride in a bouncy bus on those long forgotten roads in South America we thought we'd lefrt behind in Bolivia (the ones with more potholes, rocks and bit s missing than actual flat bits of road) we managed ot get to Puerto Natales... port to Patagonia!
First duty, find a hostal and get some rest before heading out to "Torres Del Paine". Of course, this is easier said than doen, especially when we happened to choose the only Israeli hostal in a 100mile radius. NOw, I have seriously nothing against Israelis, indeed we've met some of the funniest, nicest and greatest friends in South America that happend to be Israeli, but, me and Graeme came up with a theory to all the trouble in the middle-east at about 4am that morning.
Well, enough on the middle-east and back to Torres. The bus drops you at the bottom of a steep climb up into the mountains. The Torres (huge red towers of rock as seen in the first photo above) can be seen on a clear day from the road about 45 minutes before arriving at the hike. And, contrary to what everyone expected and told us to expect, we had beautiful blue skies, no wind (Patagonian wind reaches up to 100mph) and not a cloud in sight. Fantastic, for once we have great weather!
The walk up is pretyty brisk though, and the path is pretty muddy and steep. But we made it, me and Gordy carrying full packs with tents, and the views are spectacular. As you can see. The climb is a bit of a dula carriageway of "hikers" though and even out of season it was pretty crowded.
Aftethe firsdays hike we camped at the cabin, about half way down the mountain. JEEEZZUZ!! Was it cold? Damned right it was! Me and Gordy slept in the tent, fully clothed, (roughly 3 layers), plus a sleeping bag liner and a polar sleeping bag... and still woke up shivering at 3am. Brrrrrrr!! Graeme decided camping wasn't for him and slept in the nice warm hut a20US dollars a night. And how we were jealous.
Day 2 saw Graeme head back to town and me and Gordy gean early star and head around the mountain. A hard days walk, especially carrying the 15kg on your back for 8 hours. Not for the light-hearted this walk.
Day 3 and we set off at 7am for the top of Valle Frances, a supposed 3 hour walk to Camp Brittanico, which turned out to be about 1.45hrs. Beautiful, but the weather started turning and we headed back quickly to take the tents down.
Date: 18th April
To continue.......Day 3 was a delightful day. Good walking conditions. Dry and slightly overcast and cool. The previous days were sunny and hot with blue skies and not a cloud in the sky, which under normal circumstances in the Northern hemisphere is very nice, but you have to be aware of the dangers in NO-Ozone country, so the protective cloud cover was kind of welcoming.
We quickly packed up our tents and continued our way to Campamento Pehoe which was 2.5 hours further down the path along some more terrific scenery. The wind started picking up a bit here, and after an early start and a lot of walking we were pleased to reach the campsite- pretty exhausted with joints feeling the previous 3 days walking. We pitched up, and then headed directly to the "5 -Star-Refugio" or hostel (for the rich hikers!!!). This is usually out of bounds to the "scummy" campers and is supposed to be purely for the people that stay in the refugio, but naturally this rule is ignored and we enjoyed the pleasures of the open fire in the common room and idle banter with a lovely middle aged kiwi couple and a Welsh boy and his Dutch girlfriend....
Carl and I retired to our tent at around 9ish laden with 3 layers of clothes on, hat, gloves, socks....the works..... and crawled into our sleeping bags and hid ourselves away from the cold conditions outside.
We awoke early the next morning to do the walk to the viewpoint overlooking the glaciar on Lago Grey. We were first out of the camp so had the path to ourselves on the way up. We passed by lots of icebergs that had broken free from the glaciar and had gradually floated down the lake. We refrained from mimicking the Captain of the Titanic too....ok we didnt....
After around two hours we reached an awesome viewpoint of the glaciar. Due to the good weather and clear visibility we got a very good impression of the size of this big ice cube. A Belgian man asked me to appear in a series of photoes of "Hiker posing over a rocky cliff looking at impressive glaciar". Keep an eye out for the front cover of the next edition of The Lonely Planet Patagonia. Perhaps I made it to be a cover boy after all.....hmmmm!!!
We headed back down to the campsite and packed up in order to make the catamaran connection across the lake for our bus back to Puerto Natales.
The one downside to this awesome 4 day trek was the blatant effort to get as much money out of tourists as possible. Costs within the park for accomodation, transport, food and drink were about three times the price than regular circumstances. Fair enough.....but it got too much for some unprepared people on the trip who resorted to asking other hikers for food, to borrow their stoves, extra clothes etc etc etc. HOWEVER...fantastic and well recommended. If anyone wants to do this trek it requires sensible preparation. Bring enough food, heating, clothes etc to last. Dont underestimate!!!!.....It is worth visiting Chile purely to do this hike.
We headed back to our much loved Israeli hostel IN puerto Natales where we enjoyed the delights of hot showers, laundry, food that wasnt pasta or rice, beer and a comfortable bed. We stayed an additional day in Puerto Natales in order to rest the aching legs and for a spot of recovery, then headed south to Punta Arenas. We were originally planning on going penguin spotting here, but it is supposedly not the season which was a shame. The other plan was to head to Ushaia which is the worlds most southerly city in the Tierra del Fuego, but we recieved some conflicting opinions on Tierra del Fuego. A lot of people travel there for the sake of travelling there....they arrive and find they are not overly impressed and just head back to where they came. We knocked the idea of travelling there on the head, spent Easter Monday dining with two American lassies and then headed off with Sandra and Jon back up to meet "Oor Graeme" in Santiago.
Aaahhhh.... Santiago. How we cannot escape you!!
Totally true,. Santiago. People go there because you have to, in orsder to travel anywhere in Chile you MUST pass through Santiago. And we seem to have spent many a night there. NOt that it ain't lovely, but how can you get stuck in a city for 10 days at a time??!
Firstly, JO lives there and we had to go out and see her before leaving Chile. She'd managed to look after our gear on numerous occasions and we love her for it. Whata star! So, on arriving, we managed to hit the town with Graeme, a couple of "Oirish lads", an American and 3 ozzie girls we met somehwre in Chiloe. BUt no Jo??! Turns out I lost her phone number and it actually took uas 4 days to get in touch with her! Doh!!
So the 12st night back (monday) was spent drinming hiome brew lager at a dodgy bar in Bellavista.
Thursday... Finally get in touch with JO, get the bags back and arrange for a beer in town. Cool. NOt so cool... we get absolutely wasted with some guys from the hostel on cheap vodka and cokes, take everyone to meet JO in a posh ol bar and overwhelem the poor girl with drunken stories and loud voices. OOps! My (and the boy's) apologies! Thanks for everything! You really are a star! But next time..,. bring the fellah eh?!
After Jo left us all in the pub we managed to find outrselves in Suissia, a distrci about 5 miles form where we started, but out of 10 peiople no-one remebers the taxi-ride... hmmm....
Home Page
Text by: Jackal
Text by: Jackal
First day we headed up the local hill to " la Cabeza del Indio", a local rock on a mountainside that looks a bit like an indian's head. Of course in the rain and fog and cloud, it doesn't look like much at all except some rocks, so we carried on along the path and around the valley. And... lo and behold the sun came out! Off came the waterproofs and a jaunty stride was taken on our first 20km hike. The countryside around the Andes is gorgeous, and the farms in the area are either run by locals or by hippies living off the land. It's all very nice. After we'd been walking for about 4 hours though, seen some more water falling off some more rocks (waterfalls) we got tired and managed to thumb a lift, with a local guy}, his baby and his wife... a Dutch girl of course!
More than once I got lost, of course. NO changes there for the man with the "best sense of direction in a forest" since Oh, probably Andy NcNab or somebody. The views on the way up were spectacular though. Shame you just can't capture whole mountian ranges covered by snow and lit by bright sunshine. So, no decent pictures. What I need now is a video camera for panaoramic pictures...hmmm....
Date: 03rd April
Text by: Astro
Date: 04th April
Text by: Jackal
After failing to watch a film on cable before slipping to bed, due to the Israelis cooking their dinner at 12 midnight and listening to "U2's greatest hits" (contradiction in terms right?) at full volume, we headed to bed... only to be woken at 2am till 4.30ish as the Israelis decided to pack their bags. All of them. Including their sleeping bags and tents, which they had somehow misplaced in each others rooms. So after 2 hours sleep we hit on the theory. The Palestinians were at first happy with their new neighbours, but just asked them to keep the noise down at night... and things have just escalted since! Moral, don't stay in Israeli hostals. They have too much highly sprung energy!
The weather was good again though, so the hike was gorgeous and we didn't mind too much the nasty hills, swamps, muddy paths, rivers, rocks and such we had to traverse.
We managed to camp at Campo Italiano a the bottom of Valle Frances that night and ate (for the 2nd night running) pasta. Yummy. staright from the bag. pasta'n'sauce. You gotta love Kraft eh?!
Text by: El Gordo
Date: 28th April
Text by: Jackal
Well, let me tell you...
Tuesday... hangover and tv.
Wednesday... Not so sure... thnk me and Gordy wandered Snatiago's seedier side. There are a number of "cafes" in the city centre with blacked out windows, so we popped in to see if they had the football and for a quick Half.
What we got was a beer and a conversation in Spanish with the mostly naked barmaid, dressed to kill (or simply get tips.. ahem) in a leather thong and bra combo. Nice girl. Tried a few more bars later on that night with a few of the guys, but surprisingly the locals wouldn't let us in!! Think we must've been too classy!
I think we wnet to a club, well I know we did as we have photos, but somewhere along the line we each lost our minds and memories, but luckily not our stomachs. See the photos for an explanation!
where are we?? oh, yeah ... Friday.
After suffering all day with hangovers , we managed to drag ourselves out of bed, go to the supermarket and buy some more beer. A lucky escape. I thought for a few minutes we may stay sober. After polishing those off at the hostel, we headed out (with the Irish guys, Alan and Matt and a few others, Jon and Swedish Sandra) to another bar and then a disco. They always give free spirits out at the clubs as an incentive so, I remember the girls stripping on the bar, (a usual occurence in Santiago clubs it seems), but my next memories include only my bed, my shoes and filling them with the contents of my stomach. Nice.
A pleasant Saturday was spent recovering from alcohol poisoning by all.
And finally... Sunday. We managed to escape the confines of Santaigo, Chile and South America entirely and headed out for our Ozzie adventures!!
Links ...
Where we're going
Who we are
Top of page
