Ushuaia and Torres del Paine

Long silence it has been, i'm aware of it. I just have been spending a lot of time in places where internet wasn´t really available and I find it difficult to bound myself long enough behind a PC to write.

I left off in Ushuiaia the last time. The city is overmarketing its name as end of the world which it actually is not. But at least they do it in such an exagerated way that makes the whole fin-del-mundo-stuff funny again. And the city is impressive. The mountains around it just drop into the sea. Sea is the beagle channel, and I even went on a sailing trip on it.

I stayed in a great hostel, where i met lots of crazy travelers but where i didn´t sleep a lot. I ended up staying a few days longer then I planned cause i was just having too much fun to leave. Every morning i d go to the reception, asking for another night, to the hilarity of the hostel-people. Those who travel alone to Ushuaia, try to get to the ´free style` hostel.

We visited the National Park, which is beautiful yet overpriced since it is the national park at the end of the world. Funny detail, there is a post office where they sell fin-del-mundo-passport stamps for 6 pesos. Unfortunately, i didnt have mine with me, but my fellow hikers did obtain world´s cheesiest, largest, pinguins-containing passport stamp. I missed out, I guess.

More funny stuff. Getting to Ushuaia, I had to hitchhike, no buses between the chilean part and the argentinean part of tierra del fuego. One of my rides was a passionate fly-fisher and had just caught an 8-kilo salmon. A few days later he called me to ask if I wanted to go fishing with him and his friends which i had never done so he picked me up at 3 am (yes, indeed, 3 am!) to go flyfishing. Honestly, i still think fishing is not the most exciting of all sports, but the setting was amazingly beautiful, we drove some 4 wheeldrive vehicles for an hour untill we got to the atlantic ocean.

In ushuaia I met a Dutch guy and an English guy who had the same plan as me, hiking in Torres del Paine. Torres del Paine is a national park, back on the continent, Chilean side again. Most people do a 4-5 day hike, called the W, because of its shape on the map. This was our initial plan, but in the hostel, close to the park, we saw lots of enthusiastic people, we ourselves were in a great mood and made the stupid decision to do `the circuit´ an 8day hike, basically closing the upper parts of the W-hike. The hardest part about the hike is the fact that you have to carry around food for 8 days.

What did we buy:

* 6 packages of pasta

*1 day of powdered mashed potatoes

*7 powdered pasta sauces

*1 package of powdered soup per day

* some canned meat

*a bar of chocolat per day

*package of chocolate cookies per day

*24 hard-boiled eggs, extremely heavy but we were o so happy with them!

*bottle of whiskey

*bottle of rhum (for the hard moments)

Even though we really didnt overbuy and paid attention to the weight factor, my pack was actually heavier then my normal travel pack. Almost all of it due to food, sleeping bag and tent (ok, and the whiskey and rhum). Every meal was a happy event though! Eating to loose weight, every girl´s dream!

Torres del Paine is known for its extreme, fast changing weather conditions which kinda scared me. Heavy winds and snow are not uncommon. We got rather lucky, we only had 1 day of really heavy rainfall. The trekking was hard but amazingly beautiful and the solidarity amongst people was almost turning me into a hippy! Some anecdotes:

*In one of the first campings I saw a camping-cook making bread. Since we didnt have bread for 8 days, i went to check on the price and if bread would be available in all campings throughout the trek. He told me the bread was 4000 pesos and that in some other campings they would sell it as well. Bufff, 4000 pesos is 7 euro, pricey bread so I just carried on. When we left the camping after lunch, he called me (Oye, Belgica) and just gave me the bread hushing that we should move on fast now.

*The evening after the rainy day, we were quite worried about the tent. I didnt quite resist the heavy winds. On the camping ground, I met a guy who I had met before in our hostel. he worked as a cook in the hotel and asked how our tent was doing. In the end, I got a bed in the hotel (worth 50 euros), breakfast, brownie, lots of cookies, rainpants and chocolate!

*Once off the W trek, the campsites were less crowded and we d usually all sat together in the kitchen. In one of these camps, I met a chilean guy who works as a guide to rich people who dont want to carry 15 kilo up and down mountains (while we just loved doing that). He prepared us a salad (vegetables are heaven after 6 days of pasta and outmeal). We threw ourselves on the lettuce, tomatoes and avocado. We ended up having the funniest evening on the trek. Everybody started sharing what they had left. We still had some rhum, others had cigarettes, chocolate, and even some wine. In the morning the same guide made us pancakes!

Aaah, well i d have so many other stories, but I lack the time to write them all down...

This is what the Torres del Paine look like...

It is not easy climbing these ladders with 15 kilo packs and 5 blisters

we had to cross a mountain pass (meaning 3 hours of only very steep uphill mountain followed by a few hours of steep downhill) As prepared as usual, check out my fancy plastic bags. I could literally hear the other hikers thinking, mmm, where does this girl think she s going to.
But we made it anyway :)And these are the views we got... Seas of blue ice

The next day was 25 degrees again. Very strange all of this

What do you think when you all of a sudden see blue icebergs in the lake you re hiking around...

the first time a saw a glacier this impressive... I stood there for a veeery long time, just looking at it.

We ended up doing the 8 day hike in 7 days. My feet didnt quite agree and decided to blow up to hilarious proportions to the hilarity of the hostel people, once back in town.

Torres del Paine was an amazing experience. Between the amazing views, the physical challenge, the fun of meeting so many people, the solidarity between everyone, sleeping in a tent when it s almost freezing but being able to hear huge blocks of ice falling down a glacier, I would already do it again next year!


I m already weeeeeeks behind on my blogging... i ll try to do better but I have so many things to share and so little time to write...

Buenos Aires to the bottom of the world!

Hiiiii

ok, lots and lots of stuff to tell and so little time as i´m in ushuaia and cybercafes are quite expensive.. So be prepared for some bad built sentences instead of the James Joyce descriptions you are used to!

I left BA by bus. Golden tip for those who travel Argentina. Take Andesmar bus company. Great couches and they organize a bingo game on the bus! In Puerto Madryn, I met Renata, an Italian girl who I teamed up with.

We went on a queste for the holy tent and went camping in Peninsula Valdes. Here we made friends with 2 Argentinan guys from Buenos Aires who were traveling by car and they took us across the peninsula the day after to do some wildlife spotting. On the peninsula you can see pinguins, sea lions and elefantes marinos. (elephant seals in english i guess)

From there Renata and I made our way to Gaiman, an originally Welsh village famous for its tea and traditional Welsh sweets. Never say no to sweets! The other attraction in the town was a park made from garbage... Que? Yes exactly, ma thoughts as well, but it was actually amazing to see.

A cute little town but we didn´t spend the night.
Instead we went for a cray plan. We wanted to visit Punta Tombo because it has the largest pinguin colony on the continent but we knew it would be a busy spot. The smallest town to Punta tombo is an ugly one at 120 km so we decided we d just try to camp right outside the park entrance. We got stuck at 60 km from it and decided to camp there instead since absolutely nothing was passing by anymore so late to pick us up. Of course the minute we took out the tent, a guy passed by and took us to 20 km! He lived out there on a sheep farm. His biggest concern was that his kid had to go to school so he had to drive her every day and the fact that his cell didn´t have reception :) Really interesting to have met him.

The strangest thing abouth whole this area is just the great amount of nothingness... You can drive hunderds of kilometers and not see anything except maybe a gas station.
Meet Gauchito Gill, thair version of San Christpher (i think, me and the saints dont get along very well). Anyway, he s supposed to protect travelers and every few 100 meters you can find one of these little shrines.

This part of Patagonia it is sooo flat and really windy! So our night camping in the wild was mostly filled with fear of our supermarket-tent blowing away but it did hold! And in the morning the first car passing by took us so we got some private time with one million pinguins. They are so extremely funny!
Me blending in with the locals....

From Punta Tombo we continued to Sarmiento. A small village but it has a petrified forest with 65 billion old trees. Apparantly, there was a gaucho festival in the town so it was actually very busy. I didn´t result easy to get to the petrified forest but one of the gauchos kindly offered to take us. He called it a gauchada. Very sweet guy. Had a farm with 7000 sheeps so i guess that s why he didnt bother to treat us the taxi trip. Once again, very interesting to meet him.

From there we took the night bus (bingo again!!!) to Rio Gallegos and from there we made our way to Punta Arenas-Chile. This is the very bottom of the continent. Not a very exciting town but I needed a few days of rest and I met a lot of travelers there. Here Renata and I split up as she had an antartica trip booked from Ushuaia...

I relaxed a few days, the main event being a visit to the most southern beer brewery which I did with some guys from the hostel.

Most people take a 13 hour bus from Punta Arenas(chile) to Ushuaia (Argentina) on Tierra del Fuego (the name of the island as a whole). I wanted to go to Ushuaia but I also wanted to see a bit of Tierra del Fuego so instead I took the ferry from Punta Arenas to Porvenir, crossing the strait of Magellanes which is an event on its own! I saw pinguins and dolphins! Very little people go to Porvenir, it s not a Lonely Planet destination, but it is such a cute town! And it s actually a faster and cheaper way to get to Ushuaia anyway. I met a girl from Alaska on the ferry and we decided to spend a few days together.
We rented a bike and went exploring tierra del fuego. I was so excited to actually be there. It s a place that I have wanting to visit for so long and I just couldn´t believe I finally made it! The bikes were good but had very hard saddles. That combined with the bad roads and the fact we got a little lost and had to climb some fences, made friends with sheep and guanacos made us go the next day on foot.

After a few days which we spent with a incredibly nice family guesthouse, steph went back to Santiago while I continued the travel to Ushuaia. I was kinda afraid that I wouldnt get there. No buses but a nice Argentinan old couple took me to the Argentinan side of the island.

The landscape started to change dramatically. I was really happy to see some trees and mountains again after the huge amount of pampa I had been seeing for the last weeks.
I as now on the same road that I took leaving Buenos Aires but now I was exactly 3000 kms furher away.

I m now in Ushuaia which pretends to be the southern most city in the world. This is simply a lie as Puerto Williams is actually more to the south. Unfortunate for the Argentinans, Puerto Williams belongs to Chile, so they marketed Ushuaia to be ´the end of the world´. Anyway, it looks like a very beautiful town, locate next to the Beagle Channel.

Buenos Aires

And heeeere we are! Che, Buenos Aires, city of tango, Evita, asados and yet anothe spanish accent for me to discover!

I got here after a very long trip, passing Washington and waiting there about 7 hours. Thank god for Obama gift shops to entertain me.

I´m staying in the house of a co-alcateller. Argentine who lives and works in belgium and who happened to be here for some work/holidays. Most of the days I ve been spending them with him, his family and his friends. Swell! No dodgy hostels yet!

I´m dividing my time between the basic tourist stuff and just living the porteño life as it´s supposed to be. Drinking licuados, parties, drinks, etcetera. I´m also meeting a coworker that was with me in Puerto Rico.

One of Diego´s friends was nice enough to organize us an asado. The Argentinan answer to BBQ. Cooking meat over here is an art, I just watched and enjoyed... I think I ate enough meat to get me through the week.

Diego´s parents own a boat which I screwed up to take a decent picture of but you´ll get the idea. An old passenger boat that they remodelled it to be able to take along 18 people. (don t know what the record is but we were 18). We visited the delta of the Parana river, which is the huge river between buenos aires and uruguay. Lots of sun, nice people, some drinks... glad I wasn´t in the office that day, haha.

Besides, we visited Tigre, a town just outside BA. Known for its little port and water activities. One cute sailing boat next to the other. No need to say, this is a very upper class town.

Since I´m staying at a friend´s house, no real ellenadas have happened so far. Today i´ll be doing a city tour by bike with a fellow couchsurfer that lives in BA.

Tomorrow I´ll be heading south, so the real adventure can start.

Evita Peron´s cemetery

San Telmo, very nice neighbourhood. One of the more authentic ones.