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| 28/1/04 we're now in Buenos Aires after being in the bush for a couple of weeks. You can't believe how cold the wind got down south and what do we find when we get back to civilization? A bloody heatwave or as they describe it here. 'al forno' or ´´in the oven´´. We visited two different areas, the first, in Argentina, was the Los Glaciaries National Park. http://www.interhabit.com/interhabit/indexnotes.asp?ID=486 We stayed in two little towns. El Calafate and a smaller one called El Chalten. The latter was only built in 1989 to stop the Chileans from a landgrab so it´s pretty basic. But it does have a microbrewery which I had to visit, not bad for a frontier town. We had to share a backpackers dormitory with another couple but it was quite comfortable - while walking a trail we met another couple from Darwin. Although the wind was very strong at night we had beautiful eather the day we took a horse ride up to Mt Fitzroy - took some wonderful pictures. The second park was in Chile so we had to catch a bus across the border to Port Natales from where we booked some accomodation in Torres del Paine. Again we shared refugio dormitories, with five others the first night and by ourselves in a six bed room the second and third nights. The wind blew a gale but didn't detract from the perpetual snow-capped mountains. glaciers and iceberg-studded lakes. the place we stayed in Pto Natales was a family hotel and when we caught an early bus the girl served us our brekky in her pajamas and went back to bed when we finished. We found a little hotel (no aircon) in a lovely part of BsAs called Recoleto and have booked our flight to Santiago to connect with our LanChile flight home and organised a couple of days at Igassu Falls up on the Brasil border. All this only took two days. My god the booking agents are slow, they make Flight Centre look positively efficient Only a couple of days left so I typed a page about what I thought of Argentina. |
| Patagonia |
| 11/1/04 Just to let those of you who are both forgetful of the fact that we are traveling in South America and at the same time sufficiently geographically challenged to be unable to distinguish Bolivia from Belgium, we left the area of Bolivia currently being flooded a couple of weeks ago, and am safely esconced in sunny Argentina. I have heard that some difficulty has been experienced by those attempting to cross the Salar de Uyuni one of the most spectacular tours of the Bolivian altiplano (most of the time the road is above 4000 metres, rising to 5000 metres to cross a couple of passes) but if Phillipe, our driver has his way, tours will continue no matter how high the floods rise. We took the option of the three day tour, and loved every minute; imagine walking across an ice covered stream to bathe in hot springs, flamingoes flying across red lakes, rocks sculpted by decades of absolute dry, magic, magic stuff, crossing the border into Chile and terminating in San Pedro de Atacama, a dry, dusty tourist trap reminiscent of Tennant Creek on a bad day. Indeed the bad attitude and lack of humour followed us for our two weeks in Chile. We got caught in the travel rush leading up to Xmas (one of the dangers of staying flexible and not planning too far ahead) so had to spend three days in Antafagasto a town the Chileans pinched from Bolivia in the 1850´s, where it has remained ever since. |
Main recollections of Northern Chile are unabated destruction of the desert; it seems every square meter has been mined and left a pile of dirt; devastation and pregnant teenagers. According to the guide books, the abortion and divorce laws mitigate against Chileanos getting married and cause major problems with secondary schooling. The general lassitude towards tourists followed us into southern Chile where we were held up by a crooked tour agents and transport that was always late. And we stayed in the Chilean equivalent of Fawlty Towers. The owner was a senora in her eighties that had been host to three Chilean presidents and couldn't quite make her way into the 20th (sic) century. Had the waiter once said ¿Que? we would have fallen down laughing. If the food there had been unrepresentative of Chilean cuisine I would not now have an aversion to white bread rolls, unfortunately it was our experience that food is considered simply as a source of calories and not something to be savoured. Not withstanding the onset of starvation, we visited some really magnificent lakes, glaciers and hot springs; especially beautiful was a 400,00 hectare park put together by the ex owner of Esprit clothing which is causing something of a stir in political circles in Santiago because he's doing a much better job of showcasing the wonders of southern Chile than is the government department CONAF. |
| We plan to go to the famous Los Glaciaries and Torres del Paine, that is if the flights run to schedule, something for which the South American airlines are INFAMOUS. Our latest delay was sitting in a shelter from the rain at a wharf for 6 hours waiting for a ferry (scheduled to depart at 7 pm) which finally left at 10.30 pm, meaning we got to our accomodation at 2.30 am - our landlady was not happy. But because our Spanish isn't brilliant we couldn't understand the full force of her chagrin. |
| 19/1/04 here we are back in Chile again. One can go further south from here but we would need heated long johns to keep us warm, and we've seen enough iceburgs for the time being. We had to cross the border from Argentina to get to the Torres de Paine Park - the penultimate 'big thing' we came to SA to see (the last thing is Igassu Falls, and for that we have to go back to Argentina). Anyway, we've left the land of chocolates and steak to enter the land of the stale white bread rolls. The week we spent in the National Park de Los Glaciares (Glacier Park) was one of the most wonderful experiences. We have seen glaciers before in Europe, New Zealand and North America, but they were tidlers compared to Moreno and Upsala. And the ice bergs that break off, as big as a twenty story building, beautiful blue iceshapes floating in the lakes. We have some wonderful photos ( I know they are good because I can preview them on my camera) and some unforgettable memories. The experiences have been enhanced by the marvellous weather, especially near El Chalten. The wind was ferocious, but only at night, during the day we had lovely sunlit skies surrounded by wildflowers and the best scenery you can imagine. By the way we met a couple from Darwin on the top of a mountain while walking a delightful trail - the world sure is a small place ! Got two of the nicest horses to lug us up the big hills to see the best sights, even Rosemary started to relax after a while and she found the D sign on the saddle that put her mount into automatic pilot. |
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