Southern Patagonia - Glaciers, Mountains, and plenty of whiskey

Telmo Tango Hostel
Buenos Aires, Argentina
12:41am

I have it. Insomnia.

But let me recap the past four days. It´s Sunday already. Jeez. Time flies when you blog.

So I´ll move fast...lots of pics.
Here I am on my flight from Trelew (after seeing the penguins, whales, seals, flamingos, and Clara the smoking tour guide)...it was about an hour and a half flight to El Calafate...

Purpose of this segment was to see glaciers, to maybe hike on one, and weather-permitting, to see the famous Cerro Fitz Roy in the El Chalten area of Patagonia.

Since much of my trip is trying to figure out where to sleep, I actually got a nice tip from Gaston in Puerto Madryn. Gaston knew this young couple in El Calafate who had recently opened up a hostel called Nakel Yenu (it means Welcome Home in the native Patagonian tribes). So he hooked myself and this nice lady Kelly who was staying in the same hostel as me in Puerto Madryn.

Kelly is a 44-year old woman from Ft. Lauderdale. She had just sold her business and was taking 6 months to travel to South America. So we were on the same flight and got picked up by Jorge, the part-owner of the hostel. Very cool guy. Has two young girls with his wife Viviana. Didn´t speak a word of English. It was fun though talking to him. He spoke nice and slow for me!


This is Jorge´s rig. Since we got in by noon, Kelly and I actually decided to go with Jorge and see the glacier park for a couple of hours.


I stopped at a market and bought some chips. No matter how you pronounce ¨Krach-itos¨it just doesn´t sound right. It´s either Crack-itos or Crotch-itos.

Here is the town of El Calafate. Jorge explained that 5 years ago, there were 5,000 people. Now the population is at 40,000 and growing fast.

The drive from sunny El Calafate to the windy, cold, and rainy Perito Moreno Glacier. Jorge had an iPod connector, so I put on some Skynyrd for the occasion.

After about an hour and a half drive, this is the fist view of the glacier. As everyone says, you can´t possibly fathom the size of this from a picture. It goes 25km deep, 5km wide, 60meters high at the end from the water´s surface (and 180m high including underwater).

We all got on a boat to see it up close. The wind was howling, and the rain was coming down hard. But still you couldn´t stay inside the boat and witness this gigantic wall of ice behind glass.

It reminded me of that scene from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, where John Candy and Steve Martin have hitched a ride in the back of a pickup and are freezing. And Steve Martin, shivering, turns to John Candy and asks, ¨what do you think the temperature is?¨

¨One.¨

The next day, I went back to the Perito Moreno Glacier to do a little trekking. On the glacier.

It was a much nicer day, and our guide, Luis, promised a great time. We saw deep crevasses, talk sharp peaks, crystal clear rivers running all inside the glacier. It was about 2 hours of fun trekking with crampons on our feet to avoid slipping into a canyon. And at the end, Luis said there was a surprise before we got off the glacier. We turn a corner to find a wood table with 15 hi-ball glasses, a silver bowl of Bon o Bon chocolates, and a bottle of Famous Grouse scotch. Here´s Luis pouring us all a nice beverage.

Salud.

Back into El Calfate, I found this sign, San Francisco from here, some 7,500 miles away from home.

There´s an election going on country-wide. They expect that a woman will be elected President of Argentina. And in El Calafate I´ve decided to run for Gobernador. I´m para todos, everyone.

Chillin back at the hostel, making pasta with some cool people I met along the way: Helle (from Denmark, traveling for 5 months), Kelly (from Ft. Lauderdale, traveling for 6 months), Dan (from SF and traveling for 5 weeks) and Ifa (from Ireland, traveling for 4 months). They are pretty darn lucky they can travel for so long.

Forgot to mention. The one annoyance from this trip. On my flight from Trelew to El Calafate, and during my ENTIRE stay in El Calfate, including all the side trips, and treks I went on, were these 4 girls from southern california who were completely obnoxious. They were Pepperdine students, probably 20, and doing a semester abroad in Argentina.

They would show up for whatever bus we were to go on - hungover, and talking about doing tequila shots the night before and watching video that they took of each other the night before, with sound, and lots of shrieking.

And then the conversation would switch over to Tyler, Ashley´s on-again off again boyfriend back home. And how the bus driver looked like Tyler ¨No Ashley, I know Tyler, and the bus driver doesn´t EVEN look like Tyler! Oh my god, Tyler is soooo much cuter than that! Oh my god you guys, are you hungry? Let´s get a pizza when we stop. Yeah! A pizza sounds sooo good. So anyway , I was talking to Tyler last night, and he was like ´I have to go now,´and i was all ´what? why?´i think he´s like not as into it as he used to be.¨ ¨shut up Ashley, he totally loves you. oh my god you guys, look at the glacier. that´s soooo awesome. i can´t believe my ipod stopped working.¨

Here are the girls below, after I discovered that they would be traveling with me to El Chalten Friday morning. Constantly taking pictures cheerleader-style, hands on hips, Star-Search smiles. ¨Oh my got Krista, get me in front of this mountain...wait, let me put on my cute hat.¨Uh, that mountain is Cerro Fitz Roy, the prize of climbers around the world.

On my serene 2 and a half hour hike back from seeing the dramatic Cerro Fitz Roy (below), I was about 10 minutes from the start of the trail when I see these girls coming up. They are complaining ¨this hike is HARD¨and as I pass them, one of them says to me: ¨Um, is there like a lookout pretty close to here that we can see some like awesome views?¨ I think I said ¨Yes, about an hour and a half in.¨Everyone in our tour group ended up rolling their eyes a few times at me, the only other American on these side trips. A few people ac tually thought I was their chaperone or at least responsible, being a fellow American. Not part of their group people!

This was the 3 and a half hour bus ride (much of it on dirt roads) to El Chalten, to see Cerro Fitz Roy and more of the Glaciers National Park.

Below is a photo of where we stopped before going into town - at the park headquarters , where this gentlemen explained ¨Like , here is the totally awesome mountain where you can totally take some cool pictures with your friends for your MySpace page. Hey Ashley, your bus driver, he totally looks like Tyler.¨
He was actually very helpful.

Here is the town of El Chalten. A definite Northern Exposure town, with some great character. The yellow roof at the bottom left is where you start the hike to see Mount Fitz Roy.

Let´s skip to the good stuff...Cerro Fitz Roy. An incredible sight. When I got to the start of the hike, it was gusting like 50mph and cloudy and freezing. When I got to this vista, it cleared up and I even got to see the top of the mountain for a few minutes, which is rare.

Tehuelche Indians called it Chalten, which means smoking mountain, which is kind of what´s going on here. It´s 11,000 feet high and considered a climbers ultimate climb. Because of the sheer vert of the mountain, and the really bad weather that usually surrounds it, it´s only ascended on average by one person a year. Contrast that with Mount Everest, which is much much higher and ascended a hundred or so times a year.

This is me thinking about climbing the face of Cerro Fitz Roy. But then I realized that my equipment consisted of a half a bottle of spring water, some Trident peppermint gum, and a half a bag of Krach-itos chips. You´ve won this round Fitz Roy. But I´ll be back. I´ll be back. With a FULL bag of Krach-itos. Then we´ll see who´s boss.

A pic from the town of El Chalten. I love the sign.

¨Honey, okay, we´ll stop and get something to eat. But I´m telling you this, you and the kids can have your sandwiches and ice cream, but if they don´t have waffles at this place so help me I´m turning the car right around and we´ll go back to the IHOP I saw a few exits back.¨

A photo from the El Calafate airport this morning. The airport sits on the Lago Argentino, a gigantic lake created from the Perito Moreno Glacier. In you look to the left of the plane you can see a chunk of ice that came off of the glacier, and floated about 80 kms away.

I bought this map of Argentina, so I could keep track of where I´ve been.

And it´s a pretty good map...but as I turned it over to look at the back side...

There´s a human body schematic. Just what I need when I´m traveling...to figure out how far Mendoza is from Buenos Aires, and where exactly my colon is located. Good night eveyrone! Tip your waitress!

Spending some time in Buenos Aires tomorrow (Sunday) and taking an overnight bus to Mendoza to drink some wine for a couple of days.

Para todos,

Daniel

Gobernador