Los Glaciares

Petra, James & Andrew at Piedras Blancas Glacier

Joined by my brother, Andrew, (who had gambled his remaining holiday allowance on 2 weeks of good weather in Patagonia - brave or foolish?!) we jumped on a bus for the 4 hr trip from El Calafate to a little town called El Chalten.

As we approached the town, the bus pulled into the National Park office, where we we offloaded for an introductory talk about Los Glaciares NP by one of the local rangers. We were told with much enthusiasm that all the water in the NP - including from the lakes - is drinkable, (a fact of which they are justly proud) and were given a straightforward and helpful chat about how to keep it that way - unspoiled. How refreshing to see such a proactive and educational approach to conservation, by people who exuded passion for their job.

Cerro Torre

This good initial impression was borne out by the quality of the park management, and as we trekked around the park, in search of the Holy Grail - a sighting of the elusive Mount Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, we were enormously impressed by the quality of the paths, way-marking and campsites. They were not only well executed but also done in such a way as to create the minimal possible impact on the environment. And to top it all, the whole thing was free! Well done Los Glaciares National Park!

The very top of Cerro Torre - the region's highest peak - remained obstinately in the cloud for the time we were there, but we wee still lucky enough to avoid rain for our first 2 days of walking. When we reached the viewpoint for Mount Fitz Roy at the end of day 1, we were treated to a truly magnificent sunset over one of the most spectacular mountain scenes imaginable. About as close as I've been to a truly religious experience.

Mount Fitz Roy

The next day the cloud was slightly lower, but we were still able to get good views of another local glacier, still very impressive in its own right.
Our last hopes of another visit to the Fitz Roy viewpoint were dashed when we woke up on the morning of day 3 to the sound of rain drumming on canvas. The camper's nightmare. There was nothing else for it but to hot-foot it back down the path to the early bus home and a hot shower. But we had seen what we came to see and we were happy!

Patagonia...at last!

After a gruelling 30 hr bus ride, we arrived in Patagonia proper - a part of the trip that we had both been itching for. El Calafate, our base for the first few days was quite aptly described by one of our fellow travellers as 'Disneyland for glaciers', being just a modern town with a proliferation of outdoor outfitters, tour agents and souvenir shops. What it did offer though, was access to some of the most spectacular glaciers and wilderness areas in the world. I had been so excited about Patagonia before arriving, that I was slightly concerned the reality could never live up to the image in my head. I needn't have lost sleep on that score.
On one of our first days in town, we took a trip out to the Perito Moreno Glacier. A truly awe-inspiring sight, even when one is surrounded by hordes of shutter-happy Japanese tourists!The glacier is just one small part of the Southern Patagonian Ice-field, which covers a incredible 22,000 sq km (that's bigger than Wales!). This enormous snow factory is constantly regenerating the Perito Moreno glacier, resulting in an advance at the glacier face of a staggering 1m per day. As you stand there with your camera poised, huge chunks of blue ice the size of houses creak and topple into the lake in front of you, to form giant icebergs, which can still be seen many kms away.The glacier flows into Lago Argentino and cuts the lake in half. The 2 parts are not of equal size and the level in one part slowly rises above the other. The difference was about 2m when we were there. Occasionally the pressure gets to the stage where the water forces a tunnel through the ice and then 4 or for 5 days later the tunnel collapses spectacularly in what is known as the "Big Break". Sadly we weren´t there for it - not surprisingly - it has only happened about 16 times since 1960! Luckily all the tourist shops in El Calafate show videos of the 2006 break looped continuously - it was almost like being there!

With our memory cards suitably bursting with photos, it was time to get away from the tourist swarms and head for the hills!

Whales, Whales, bleeping big fishes are Whales!!

Ok so the title is mildly misleading and I would like to stop any comments by making it clear that I know whales are mammals not fishes but it was a particuarly good chant Petra once overheard at a Wales rugby match!

We decided to put a small diversion on our southerly route and take a hard left to head due east from the mountains to the Argentinian Atlantic coast - just the minor issue of a 10 hour overnight bus ride!

The reason for this bizarre behaviour was whales. A combination of cold northerly currents mixing with warm southerly currents and a sheltered bay makes the Peninsula Valdes near Puerto Madryn a breeding haven for Southern Right Whales from July to December - the sheltered Gulfo Nuevo is packed full of the things (a bit like oversized sardines!).

We decided not to go on a tour from Puerto Madryn as they often don´t offer much time on the water so headed to the little village of Puerto Piramides that turns from sleepy fishing village to whale watching central for a few months each year. The company Moby Dick had been recommended to us for long tours in a small boat that are the best - especially the 5pm sailing which as the last in the day goes on longer than the rest. Sadly we spent the day on a windy beach praying for the wind to drop as all other sailings on this boat had been cancelled. We were about to swollow our pride and go on a big boat with everyone else for a quick trip when Moby Dick confirmed that we couldn´t go at 5pm but they would put on a special 8am sailing the next day that we could go on - hoorah!
The tour was great! Being in a RIB meant we were close to the action and in nearly 3 hours on the water saw over 10 whales including calfs. At one stage we had 4 bobbing round the boat - literaly within touching distance! These spectacular animals are superb. After hanging around on the surface for a few minutes they would dive showing off their enormous tails as they disappeared out of sight. It was a real privilege to see so many of them and so close. Being on the early boat meant that we were the only ones out so the 20 or so of us onboard had a private show - superb! I can confirm however that whales have very bad breath!

Amusingly we met an Lonely Planet researcher who offered us a lift back to the main town rather than wait for the bus. He might have regretted this as we spent the next hour interrogating him about the inner workings of the Lonely Planet.

The final spectacle was very unexpected. We were sitting on the beach in Puerto Madryn when we spotted a whale some 200 yards off shore - very unusual. It then did a series of 10 breaches - jumping out of the water and slamming down. It was the only thing we hadn´t seen from the boat and was the icing on the cake.

Time to turn our compass back south and jump 10 degrees down into deepest darkest Patagonia..............

Feliz Navidad!

Feels like we've been doing a bit better recently on the blog entries... nearly up to date!

Watch this space for news about our whale-watching trip and some awesome trekking in Patagonia!

It just seemed worth a quick 'real time' entry, as we have now reached the southern-most part of our journey in South America, (Punta Arenas in Chile at 53 degrees South) and have started the long haul back north to Santiago. The bottom of Patagonia really did feel like the End of the World! but in a beautiful and unspoilt kind of way.

Just wanted to get in a quick 'MERRY CHRISTMAS!' too, before all of you finish work for the hols. They don't really celebrate Christmas as much out here as we do back at home - for which James is extremely grateful, but I am disappointed! - no mince pies and mulled wine for Petra this year:-( so it will be a pretty low-key affair. We are headed back to Bariloche, in Argentina, to spend christmas in one of our favorite hostels so far, where we also stayed on our way south. Think of us having a big lamb grill in the sun while you're all tucking into your turkey!

So, thanks to everyone who has made the effort to follow the blog so far, (we are constantly amazed and touched by how many of you comment on it) . A very Merry Christmas to you and all your families, and all the best for a great start to 2008!

Petra & James

Welsh Patagonia

When you arrive in a town with streetnames like Calle Llewelyn Davies and Avenida Wyn-Jones, after a few minutes of confusion, you realise you must have landed in a random welsh community somewhere deep in Patagonia. In the 1860's a few hardy taff's (no doubt lured by the prospect of infinite land to graze their sheep) made the trip across to the New World, and introduced civilisation (otherwise known as tea-shops!) to Patagonia. Some of the vilages they estabished still exist today as outposts of welsh cuture, dotted over the south of Argentina.

Since we were in the neighbourhood, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit the (South American) Land of my Fathers, and the lure of the Welsh Tea was of course too great. James and I found ourselves in the quaint little town of Trevelin(Mill Town) for a few days.
In the style of traditional welsh home cooking, 'tea' was infact more like a 3-course meal, with a huge streaming pot of tea (the best we'd had in South America) accompanied by home-made bread, scones, cheese, butter, jam, and no less than 5 different types of cakes! A hungry backpacker's dream!On mentioning that I was born in Wales, many of the locals including the owners of the teahouse were keen to try out their welsh on me. Unfortunately the only words I can remember from my time in Swansea are those which appear on signposts, such as Push, Pull and No Parking, which don't make for great conversation!

We needed the next few days to work off the effects of the cake overload in the beautiful nearby 'Los Alerces' National Park, where we hiked up to another snow-bound refugio, in the middle of nowhere, and unmanned this time. We had the tiny little place to ourselves, and spend the night huddled up by the wood-burning stove hoping that this wouldn't be the night when the roof blew off! It was SO cold!

Argentine Food and Drink

No blog about time in Argentina would be complete without mention of the food and drink - it is simply sensational.

Lets start with the food, and where better than the steak. Now we have got used to the system we greatly enjoy watching the shock on other tourist´s faces when a piece of meat the size of a football arrives on their plate! This is normally the 500g bife de chorizo - or sirloin steak to you and me - and it is worth ordering one to share. This isn´t any old chewy, fatty piece of meat - it is lovely, succulent and tasty. In fact I´m getting hungry just thinking of it. Other options we have tried are the fillet steak (devine), chorizo sausage (mmmm) and blood sausage (mmmm). We have also tried a lovely cut called the entraña but yet to work out what that is in English. The Argentines do not believe in wasting any meat so the normally menu includes intenstines, sweatbreads etc but so far we have avoided these.
Meat table at Alberto's before it hits the grill

All the above meat is normally cooked on a huge barbeque - or Parilla as it is called here. This is a complex construction where the charcoal is only placed under the grill when it is already white hot, there is normally a fire on the side to keep a supply ready. The grill is on a mechanism to lower, raise and tilt it to ensure the meat is done perfectly. All in all, at a good parilla restaurant (of which there are many to choose from) you can expect a a piece of meat like you will get no where else.

The 'Parilla'

The Italians have a large influence here and are one of the largest immigrant groups. This means a lot of great pasta and pizzas. I have to admit that we haven´t tried much of this as our focus has been on the steaks but what we have tried would give the locals of Naples a run for their money!

The other important import from Italy is the ice cream. Most towns have a selection of "Heladerias Artesenal" - homemade ice cream shops. They are all good but there is one in Bariloche and nearby towns called Jauja that takes the biscuit. More flavours than you can shake a cone at (well over 50) and all delicious. We haven´t quite made our way through them all yet but we did pretty well and are heading back there for Christmas. My favourite was Fig and Nut where Petra was very partial to the Dulce de Leche Merengue. Getting even hungrier.

Petra & James enjoying a platter of regional goodies! Mmmmm!

On the subject of immigrants and sweet food, the Swiss moved to Argentina in droves at various stages, especially to the very alpine-esque Lake District. Here they continued their tradition of chocolate making. In Bariloche your can´t swing a cat for chocolate shops. All lovely shops offering an astonishing range of home-made style chocolates. Really delicious - we didn´t try enough to select a favourite flavour - that is how big the choice is!!

Argentina specialises in Empanadas - a kind of savoury pastry a little like a Cornish Pasty. The normal flavours are meat, chicken and ham & cheese but if you look hard you can find shops that make them fresh with a whole range of options - tomato, basil & mozerella, roquefort, arabian (lemon and beef), vegetable and so many more. They make a great snack before a night bus or when you can´t face any more steak.

On a final sweet note, the Argentines love Dulce de Leche - caremelised condensed milk. It is spread on bread, put in tarts, pastries and chocolates are filled with it and we love it! We desperately try to show self restraint when we walk past a bakery but feel we have deserved it post trekking and fairly often succumb at other times. Just got to keep walking and we´ll be ok! Andrew (Petra´s brother) was able to show less self restraint and bought a tub of the stuff for pudding. When we asked what he was going to eat it with the response was: "a spoon of course!".

Right then, after all that I am starving so off to find some grub - making ourselves sausage and lentil stew for tea. Will save the drink section of this for another day.

Bariloche Part 2 - the slimming!

Having waved a sad goodbye to Sam and Anna we decided to start losing the pounds all the steaks, wine, chocolate and ice creams had added - not to mention saving some of the other types of pounds!

The snow line was still quite low but we worked out a possible mostly low level route. Firstly we headed up from Argentina´s premier ski resort (sadly not enough snow for this!) up a path to Refugio Frey. This hut is situated overlooking a lake with jagged peaks all around. There were increasingly large patches of snow for most of the second half of the walk and snow proper for about the last hour. The path was very clear and well trodden but we did fall through a couple of times - me to my knees, Petra to her waist! The Refugio was lovely and completely snow bound. The Club Andino Bariloche (CAB) do a great job keeping it open all year round. The staff did mention that not many people make it during the winter though. We spent a pleasant 45 minutes chatting to them and eating Oreos before heading down to camp. The accomodation at the Refugio was one large room and there was a large school party on the way that we didn´t fancy sharing with! We camped in a wood on a dry patch of land but there was a large snowfield up hill and more snow in the woods downhill. We tucked ourselves into our sleeping bags early but didn´t get much sleep - it was freezing! Our wet boots froze solid and both the inside and outside of the tent were covered in ice - brrrr! As we melted snow to cook porridge for breakfast we promised ourselves a warmer spot that evening.

Last part of walk to refugio Frey (visible in distance)

Normally on trekking trips we have clear duties. These have never been formally decided but have come into existence based on how we shared out the kit on our first trek. Petra carries the stove, pans, cups etc and is responsible for making sure they make it into her pack. I take the tent and first aid kit amongst others. One of mine is toothpaste and unfortunately this time I let the side down - the toothpaste and my toothbrush were sitting merrily by the sink in our hostel while we froze on the mountainside! After some discussion we decided that 3 days without brushing our teeth was just too grim. We walked back the way we had come until a fork in the path. It was about a one anf a half hour walk back to the afore mentioned ski resort where we hoped there might be a supermarket. As it was my fault and because I enjoy such things, I set off to replace the missing articles. By running sections I made it to the resort, found a minimarket with the necessary and back to Petra in one and half hours - good unplanned training. It has been suggested I could come up with a better story - something like medical emergency, waist deep snow, through the night, fought of a yeti and the like but I imagine Petra would tell you all the truth if I tried anything like that.

After this we headed down the other fork to a lake. We had planned to carry on to the end of the lake but we came across a beautiful lakeside spot with our own private beach so decided to stop short - it had nothing to do with tiredness on my part! It was a lovely spot and we lit a fire, toasted frankfurters and generally chilled out. It was certainly warmer than the previous night but cold enough for us to decide to search for fleece liners when we got back to Bariloche.

The next day the weather continued to play ball and we trekked along the lake, down a road and round a bit of another lake until mid afternoon. During all this we came across two fantastic golden retrievers who followed us for a while and we ended up having to be agressive to get them to head back for home as neared the main road. We had intended to climb up to another smaller lake but a poor map, vague directions and frustrations trying to cross numerous rivers combined with coming across another lovely campsite made us stop early. Afterall we had walked further than planned with an early stop the night before and not finding the promised bus for the section along the road. It was another lovely spot with a fire and private beach where we were able to continue to enjoy the surprisingly fine if somewhat windy weather.

The next morning we ambled back to the road and headed back to our hostel. It wasn´t the most challenging 3 and a bitdays trekking we have ever done but beautiful and it certainly helped work of the steaks and ensure we could enjoy our few days in a luxury hotel guilt free.

Going down...... (Bariloche Part1)

It seems that of all the places we've stayed in South America, the mountain towns are the ones we love best, and Bariloche was no exception. In one swift jump (otherwise known as an overnight bus) we hopped from Mendoza to San Martin de los Andes (where we had our first taste of northern Patagonia) and then to Bariloche. One's impression of a new place is affected by many different things - the weather, who you're with, how your accomodation measures up, and of course the look and feel of a place. It would be hard to down-score Bariloche on any of these counts.


Things started well with the drive into town along the shores of lake Nahuel Huapi, on which Bariloche sits, facing majestic ranges of snow-capped peaks, across the brilliant blue water of the lake.

Our taxi ride to the hostel from the bus station took us down a street where every other shop was a chocolate shop. The establishments which weren't purveyors of top mouth-watering sweet-meats sold outdoor gear. I knew I was going to feel at home here! And to top it all, our hostel in Bariloche, Periko's, turned out to be one of our favourites of the trip so far.
On our first day in town, accompanied by Sam and Anna , we hired bikes and went for a jaunt around the Llao Llao penninsular - a beautiful headland, just outside Bariloche, encompassing some of the finest real estate in Argentina, and home to half the country's rich retirees. We set off in brilliant sunshine, and enjoyed our first few kilometres of stunning coastal and mountain scenery. At lunchtime we stopped in a sheltered bay for a quick snack, and lulled into a false sense of security by how beautiful the weather had been until that point, proceded with the second sunscreen application of the day... BIG mistake. In a matter of minutes, the skies clouded over and about half way round our intended route, we forced to take shelter in a hot-dog kiosk, as the heavens opened, and it started raining with a fury only known in places called 'the Lake District'.

We were soon joined by several other unfortunates who had hired bikes from the same location, and in no time at all, 8 fellow drwoned rats on bikes were huddled in the kiosk, peering hopefully at the sky. After 1.5 hrs, in which time the rain showed no sign of abating, we decided enough was enough. The thought of pedalling the remaining 12 kms in driving wind and rain was too much even for the hardcore boys, and we resorted to calling the guy who had hired us the bikes. It took surprisingly little begging to persuade him to come and pick us up in his SUV, and transport 8 drenched customers plus bikes back to the warmth of an open fire and cup of tea. What a star! Yet more evidence for the unremitting friendliness of the Argentinians.

After the biking ordeal, we were of course hungry (again!) for some (more!) Argentinian beef. In our never-ending quest for the best steak in Argentina (its a tough job, but someone's got to do it!) we took ourselves off to Alberto's, the most famous 'Parilla' in town, where as the guidebook says, "Its worth dining at this esteemed parilla simply to see the astonished look on tourists' faces when a slab of beef the size of a football lands on the table".


They don't exaggerate. It is still beyond me after more than a month in Argentina why they even bother to include on the menu portions of steak weighing 500g. Once added to a pile of chips the size of a small mountain, plus a generous portion of chorizo or blood sausage, this is surely more than a normal human being (even James) can consume in one sitting, no?
We contented ourselves with sharing one of these football sized slabs of meat, if only to save room for the icing on the cake, as it were. A trip to Jauja's ice-cream parlour, where they serve a bamboozling array of top notch italian quality ice-cream (as a sort of 'digestif' for the steak if you like) and accomodatingly remain open till after 12pm! Mmmmmm!

Good job there are so many mountains, or I could get seriously fat living here!