Torres Del Paine

Right - once again we're quite a long way behind on the blog. Probably due to our spending half our lives on busses. In any case, this post is from Easter weekend, and describes our epic adventure in Chile's "Torres Del Paine" national park. We decided to pop over the border for 2 days from Argentina to see this park because, apparently, it's rather good ...

Now, because of our very tight time schedule (imposed by restricted availability to do the Inca Trail - grrr - more on this in a later post when I've calmed down) we only had one day in the park. Most people spend between 3 and 10 days there, camping in the park to get the full experience. We only had one day, so had to plan our route carefully. Added to our problems was the fact that we only had an afternoon to get everything ready for the trek, and that afternoon happened to be on Easter Monday. Needless to say - everything was shut.

Fortunately for us, our hostel organised the transport and even lent us waterproofs. Unfortunately for us, the only place open to buy food was a supermarket called SuperMac, henceforth known as the "Worst Supermarket In The World". They had no bread, meat, vegetables or fresh fruit and we found out later that the tinned tuna and tinned peaches we had purchased were the most disgusting things ever to have been created in the whole history of human existence. That left us with pasta and eggs. Decent trekking fuel, but not great on the taste front. But I digress...

For our one day excursion we desperately wanted to see the highlights of the park: the Towers of Paine themselves - huge 2500 metre plus granite towers rising out of the mountain tops. We were told however that this would be "difficult". It breaks down like this: Bus arrives in the park at 11am. Bus leaves the park at 7.45pm. There are no other buses. Walk supposedly takes 9 hours. According to this we'd reach the bus stop 15 minutes late, and be forced to camp in the park ... with no camping gear. We decided if we ran certain sections we'd definitely make it back in time. Sensible? Here's what happened:




We arrived at the bus stop to see this. We had to ascend and descend that thing in under 9 hours. Oh dear. We began walking with recklessly speed, occasionally looking back over the scenery:



We then entered a beautiful river valley:



Towards the top, the terrain became increasingly steep and difficult to negotiate, but finally we got there, and the incredible Torres Del Paine loomed into view:



We actually made it to the top in just over 3 hours, over one hour quicker than we were quoted. Come on! I think the times were for really fat people or waterbuffulo or something. We even had time to relax at the top for an hour, and took a longer route back. A much longer route as it turned out - we only just made it! Oops.

AND FINALLY: At the top of the mountain, in front of the Torres, I was taking a picture of Liz when a huge gust of wind nearly knocked her over. Here are the pics:

The End of the World.

So after the mammoth bus journey and a very welcome stop off in the tiny village of Tolhuin, where we stocked up on the best pastries I´ve ever tasted..we arrived in Ushuaia. The town is set between the Beagle Channel and huge glacial mountain peaks about 1500m high. The scenery is pretty spectacular! It is also the southernmost city in the world..and all the gift shopped merchandise will NOT let you forget this!

We knew we were REALLY far south as soon as we got off the bus..it was freezing!! After spending 6 weeks in the tropics of Brazil and northern Argentina this was a shock! I was very happy that I´d packed that extra hoody now!

We spent 2 days in Ushuaia and loved it despite the cold weather..luckily the sun stayed out so it wasn´t too bad! We hiked up 15k to see the Glacier Martial. The hike up was great and the last few kilometres we were properly trekking in the snow! The views of Ushuaia and the Beagle Channel were amazing. This was the first glacier I´ve ever seen and I was impressed!

We spent the next day in the Tierra Del Fuego National Park, which is about 12k west of Ushuaia. We hiked a couple of trails in the park, the last one was a great 7k trek along the coast where we spotted a couple of flightless orange billed steamer ducks..a very funny sight!

Next stop Chile..after ANOTHER really long bus jounery...

The Bus to Ushuaia

Here's the thing about Patagonia - it's big. Really really big.

It's also really quite empty. The majority of the place is either taken up by fields and fields of non-arable pampas grass, or fields and fields of grazing land for sheep and cows. Actual towns or cities are spread far and wide, and there ain't much to do in the space between. The upshot is - a lot of bus travel. For example: the bus from Puerto Madryn to Ushuaia...

After our penguin and killer whale experiences, the next port of call was some 10,000km away in the southernmost city in the world. There was no direct bus, so we needed to get a 20 hour bus to Rio Gallegos, overnight there, then grab a further 14 hour bus down to Ushuaia. Ow.

Now to be fair, the only thing that can keep such long haul bus journeys interesting is a good book, a gameboy and huge quantities of food. Therefore we stocked up on empanadas, steak sandwiches, cookies, etc. before leaving and the first part of our journey finished comfortably and uneventfully.

For the second leg we did the same. However, what we didn't realise was, despite starting and ending in Argentina, the route from Rio Gallegos to Ushuaia actually passes through Chile for a bit. What we also didn't realise was (until we boarded the bus at 8.45am) that it is illegal to bring any kind of fruit, vegetables, fish, meat, eggs, dairy products or in fact any type of food whatsoever across the border. The bus was due to reach Chile at 9.30 giving us precisely 45 minutes to eat: 1 bag of salad, 1 tin of peaches, 1 large salami, 1 avocado, 5 tomatoes, 1 packet of cookies, 6 bread roles and 7 (yes 7) apples. Oh and they also gave us breakfast...

I managed four apples and one tomato before feeling really ill (not a great effort I admit, but in my defense it was early in the morning and I was still half asleep). Liz managed just one apple. We soon realised we were never going to get through everything, so started to hide food surreptitiously around the bus. If the items were found we could deny all knowledge.

Sure enough, when we got to the border we were ordered off the bus while it was searched. The wait was nerve wracking - particularly as the officials kept exiting the bus carrying huge binliners full of contraband items. Eventually we were let back on but didn't dare check our hiding places until the bus started moving again and the border was out of sight. The outcome? Almost everything remained in tact. Yes!!!!!! The only things we lost were the breakfast croissants the bus company gave us. We are now officially international smugglers.

... and ... Killer Whales!

We saw this!

OK ... so this isn't actually one of our pictures - I got it off Google images. BUT we did see this. And had we sat there for four hours with the camera trained to the exact right spot of beach, and if we had a very expensive camera with an incredible zoom, and if we had shelled out the extra 1200 USD for a couple of permits to the extra-special-closer-to-the-action photographer zone ... then we could have got a shot like this too.

First the backstory: After the success of renting a car to get to Punta Tombo, we decided to push our luck, rent another vehicle and drive to Peninsula Valdes (about 200km north of Punta Tombo).

Originally we were going to the Peninsula just to see the sea lion and elephant seal colonies. The Lonely Planet gave us a 3% chance of seeing Killer Whales so we didn't get our expectations too high. That was until the night before we went, when a man in our hostel told us he'd seen them and recommended that we get to Punta Norte (the best area for whale watching on the Peninsula) by 10am the next morning.

So, on the day in question, we got up ridiculously early for the 3 hour drive, and arrived at Punta Norte bang on 9.30 ....... only to be told by some Scandanavians that the whales had just left and we'd missed a full on beach attack by half-an-hour. They said we should have got there at 7am - high tide. There would be another high tide at around 7pm, when the whales might come back ... if they weren't too full. Grrrrr...

We decided therefore to explore the rest of Peninsula Valdes and come back later. Good choice. Here is a list of the animals we saw in chronological order: sheep, llama, armadillo, sea lions, rhea (a cross between an ostrich and an emu), megallanic penguins and elephant seals.

The seal lions were great - there were hundreds of them lying on the beaches making hilarious groaning noises, and there were loads of young seal pups playing in the surf. Here's a picture of them - one we actually did take ourselves - promise!


The elephant seals were comedy as well. They are very fat and their tiny flippers are useless on land, so they found it nearly impossible to haul themselves up and down the beach. They would wobble a few feet then just sit there, exhausted. Best trivia: Male elephant seals sport an enormous proboscis that resembles an elephant's trunk. Dominant males are known as "beachmasters" and can control hareems of up to 100 females, but must constantly fight off challenges from other bachelors.

We got back to the whale watching area around 2.30 (just in case we'd been fed more incorrect information) and lo and behold, within a couple of hours two whales had arrived. They started off by playing a way off-shore, but before long they started to make passes nearer to the beach. The larger male whale treated us to one slow pass very close to where we were standing.

Again this picture is ours - promise. Finally, after about four hours of larking about, they began to circle near where the sea lions were playing in the surf. Then suddenly, incredibly, we saw the big male actually beach itself trying to catch a seal! It was too far away to see if he had caught anything, but one of the rangers closer to the action called in and said he'd caught one. Absolutely amazing!

Oh and there was an armadillo in the car park too:

Penguins!!

We are now in southern Argentina, in the region called Patagonia. Chris and I have been pretty excited about reaching this point in our travels for a very long time now..in fact I think one of the reasons for choosing to travel South America was to come to Patagonia and visit a certain type of animal. And i think anyone who knows us well knows how much we love these little creatures! Yes I´m talking about penguins!!!!

We had read about a place called Punta Tombo in Patagonia, where the largest colony of penguins outside of Antartica live and decided we must visit! So we hired a car and got up VERY early..we even saw sunrise..and excitedly drove the 2 hours out to the Punta Tombo National Park. We arrived and ran into the park to be greeted by literally thousands and thousands of Magenellic penguins!! They were everywhere we looked, walking around or just standing, or hiding in their little dug outs. We couldn´t believe it!! They were really interested in us too, they´d walk up to us and look up and twist their little necks round at us trying to get a closer look! They were so funny! It was amazing to be this close to penguins and for them not to care at all.

We had the whole park to ourselves with the penguins for hours which was great! We walked down to the beach where lots of them were basking in the morning sun or playing in the water-they loved playing in the waves and it was hillarious watching them get taken out by waves and trying to get back to shore..a very funny sight!!

We spent about 5 hours with them and didn´t want to leave! It was one of the best days of my life...so happy!!

Steak, Cats and Guns

As it is unlikely that we will receive anything from Pete Ford this century, I will provide a short account of our night in together in Punta del Este:

Arsenal beat AC Milan 2-0. Pete got very drunk and offended everybody.

Right - now that's done - on with the blog. As Liz has written below we had an absolutely packed few days in Buenos Aires. Here are 3 reasons why Buenos Aires is one of the greatest places on earth:

1) Sirloin steak bought at the supermarket is the same price by weight as bread.

2) Restaurants, bars and ice cream parlours remain open very very late at night (later even than kebab vans in the UK).

3) It has a botanical garden jam packed full of cats.

At the risk of turning this blog into a homage to beef, I will briefly discuss the steak. It is very good and very cheap. I had at least one steak for every day that we were in BA. A particlar favourite of mine was vaciopan (meaning "cow in bread" or something similar). Literally a big steak in a big roll - no garnish, no salad, no nonsense. Costs 1.2GBP.

Something we also did every day (nearly) was visit the cat gardens. Basically some rare plants, fenced off and surrounded by hundreds of cats. Everywhere you look there's a cat. It is a very surreal and wonderful place. But how did they all get here? The story goes that at some point these botanical gardens suffered an infestation of rodents and a few cats were introduced to keep the numbers down. These cats then started to breed and now there is an infestation of cats! People seem to be happier with the new residents however, and many locals feed them with cat food and even chunks of meat. Who knows what they'll do if the numbers get too big however. Dogs/Bears?


Guns. As Liz mentions below, we visited a gun museum, and oh yes there were a lot of guns. What she didn't mention was the man who "showed-us-around". As we were looking at a couple of old hand-guns, we were approached by a middle aged man who began jabbering at us in Spanish. As our Spanish is slightly better than our Portugese, we eventually worked out he wanted to know where we were from. "England," we said. Turns out he was a veteran of the Falklands war. But, fortunately (and I aplogise for my poor Spanish here):

"No es una problema con ustedes. Es una problema con Maggie Thatcher."

So that's OK then? To prove there were no hard feelings, he began to give us a very detailed tour of every single gun the museum had to offer, in rapid, technical, incomprehensible Spanish. After an excruciating 20 minutes or so, I looked theatrically down at my watch, said something like "Aye carumba!" and we were able make our excuses and leave. A word of advice: Never visit a museum dedicated to war, in a country you have recently been at war with ...

The Reason for Delay:

The blog has not been updated for a while. I apologise for this. However, for once it is not out of laziness, lack of time, or lack of anything to write about. It is, like so many things in life, the fault of Pete Ford.

We were hoping to get Pete to write a guest blog post for us whilst he was in Uruguay, but the 30 or so hours that he was with us were so eventful that he never got around to writing anything. Mr. Ford (of course used to such time pressure as a journalist), said he'd write it for us on the plane and email a draft as soon as he had access to the internet. In the interests of keeping the blog chronological, we refrained from writing a post about Buenos Aires before receiving his account from Uruguay. We are still waiting.

Write the blog Pete!

Buenos Aires Baby!!

We arrived in Buenos Aires by boat from Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay a week ago..and for some reason didn´t get a stamp when we entered Argentina..which I am very upset about! Also means we are officially nowhere as we got an exit stamp from Uruguay..very weird! Anyway we stayed in a neighbourhood of BA called San Telmo for the first two nights and then moved to the´posher´part of town in Palermo. We stayed 5 days in BA and walked constantly for about 4 and a half of them..the only time we sat down was to eat steak and ice cream-which was amazing.

The first day we met up with some mates from the US and walked around San Telmo, visting a cool antiques market and a few big sights like Evita´s old digs and the port. The second day we walked around Palermo´s great parks which was lovely- as the weather has been absolutely beautiful since we got here, haven´t seen a cloud in the sky for a week! The third day we walked to another neighbourhood called Recoleta and visited the famous cemetery..it was absolutely amazing, all of BA´s rich and famous are buried there, including Eva Peron and the grave sites are enourmous, a few of them looked like actual churches they were so big. We then walked on (we walked for 7 hours this day) to the centre of BA for the historical sights, which for some reason included a gun museum...yep just full of guns! Weird..and a little scary! In the evening we went to a tango show which was fab!! As we hadn´t booked before hand we couldn´t choose our seats so we had front row seats-ah!! The show was amazing, the dancers were so so good, legs and feet everywhere so quickly and elegantly!

The next couple of days we went to La Boca, another neighbourhood in BA. We saw the Boca Juniors football stadium and walked around the colourful streets- there is a street where all the houses are painted really bright colours-was great to see! We also went to the BA zoo which was one of the best I´ve been to, we were followed round by little otters at one point!

We both loved BA so much, it was really sad to leave (especially as we left on a 19 hour bus journey!) the people were so friendly and the food was lovely- I have tasted the best ice cream I´ve ever tasted (and I have tasted a lot of ice cream in my time) it´s a flavour called ´Tramontella´-kind of a mix between fudge and vanilla, and only made in Argentina-and not surprisingly I´ve eaten far too much of it so far!

Beef

As you can see Chris was pretty happy with his steak in Montevideo. It was obscene!! And delicious!

Uruguay: Food 1 Weather 0

So despite the donkey vote I was very upset to realise we had to actually get a bus to Uruguay. We arrived, after an overnight bus from Porto Allegre to Chui on the border at 6am and had to wait in the dark for the first bus of the day to Punta del Diablo. Punta del Diablo is a very remote and underdeveloped fishing and surfing village on the coast of Uruguay. We thought we’d left the rain behind us in Brazil but no- it rained solid for the 2 days we were in this beautiful little village which was a shame as the only thing to do is lie on the beach or swim-and the weather was so bad we didn’t want to leave our cute little cabana! Oh well, we ate lots, went for a very windy wet run on the beach and got through a few books!

We then traveled a few hours down the coast to La Paloma in search of some sun. La Paloma is slightly bigger than Diablo but it is another surfing beach town-lovely beaches and very chilled out. And luckily we arrived to sun...and some amazing cheap seafood!

Our next stop in Uruguay was Punta de Este for two nights, a very popular international beach resort. It is here we finally met up with Mr Peter Ford! He flew down for one day and a night to see us-and he brought the sun! What a legend! I’ll let our guest blogger, the man himself, fill you in. Certainly an unforgettable night...I am definitely still recovering.

We arrived in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, yesterday and have enjoyed wondering the streets today and very much looking forward to a meal at a ´parrilla´(steakhouse) tonight- and to quote the Lonely Planet `the steaks here are so large they are almost obscene´. You can imagine Chris´ excitement.