In Patagonia, Part 3

Ya'll wouldn't believe how busy I've been lately. I can't believe it's taken me so long to write a simple photo travel post. I'll keep this brief, and I have some rather interesting aviation content forthcoming. I promise!

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Puerto Natales was actually much nicer and quainter than it seemed from the boat, but its tree-lined avenues of hotels, hostels, restaurants, and outdoor equipment stores had a decidedly abandoned feel to them, as the town's largest, itinerant population - the tourists - had fled north in the wake of Torres del Paine's forced closure. We found a notice fluttering in the breeze, stapled to our hostel's door, like a wild west wanted poster. It proclaimed that by decree of the President of Chile, at least part of Torres del Paine National Park would open by Wednesday, January 4th - two days hence. We were a bit skeptical. None of the staff at Hostal Nancy spoke English; despite my finally advancing Spanish skills, I couldn't get much information about the national park out of them.


We headed to Erratic Rock Hostel, widely considered the unofficial authority on all things TdP. Bill, the Oregon-born proprieter, minced no words. "Well it's dumb as hell that they're even considering opening already," he opined. "It's clearly all about money. This town is scared stiff about what happens if the Torres del Paine money dries up, and the government is responding to that." He noted that this was the second major fire in six years - another tourist inadvertently set a huge fire in 2006 - and so far as Bill was concerned, the rush to reopen TdP proved the authorities had learned nothing from either event. He doubted very much whether the French Valley would be open the first day, and in any event waiting until Wednesday would give us one night in the park. We decided to follow the herd north into Argentina, and immediately bought two of the few remaining bus tickets a nearby travel agency.

But before leaving Puerto Natales, we reunited with our shipmates for dinner at the Pizzeria Mesita Grande near the Plaza de Armas. Fabien, Tanja, Su-Anne, Uli, and Tobias were all there, & we had a wonderful time talking, eating, & drinking once more. We traded final goodbyes in the fading twilight as we walked back to our respective hostels after 11pm.

It was a short night, for the bus picked us up at Hostal Nancy at 7am the next morning. The normal bus tickets north were sold out for several days, so we had joined a daytrip to the Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina with the intention of being dropped off at our destination, El Calafate Argentina, on the return leg to Puerto Natales. Our friend Uli was coming along on the daytrip, although he was returning to Pto. Natales that night. After looping around town picking up other daytrippers, the bus set off to the northwest, following Sono Ultima Esperanza for a while before climbing into the windcarved amber hills. The smoke from the fires hung thick, and we never did glimpse the Torres through the haze though we passed nearby. As we approached the Argentina border, the landscape reminded me a great deal of eastern Montana. Once the passport formalities were complete, we proceeded into Calafate, and then onwards to Perito Moreno.


Neither words nor pictures are sufficient to describe how magnificent the Perito Moreno glacier is. It was captivating; we could have spent all day simply watching and listening as it constantly calved off icebergs the size of large apartment buildings. It has two faces of three miles and two miles, respectively, and is 180' tall at its terminal base. It splits Argentina's largest lake in two, damming it until one side floods so high that the ice can resist the pressure no more, and the result is a spectacular, cataclysmic rupture every five years or so. There is a great deal of tourism business associated with leading people to, onto, around, and afloat near this glacier, but all this human activity is utterly puny in its shadow. We could have stayed all day, but because we joined this particular tour we had only 45 minutes on the balconies overlooking the east face, and one hour on a catamaran that toured the south face. What a shame.


We didn't linger in Calafate on our return; we purchased groceries and hopped a bus three hours north, to the hardscrabble little town of El Chaltén. This town is only about 25 years old, being hastily erected in the 1980s to give Chile pause regarding any thoughts of eastward expansion. It more recently became a climber's mecca, sitting as it does in the shadow of the famed and feared Fitz Roy Mountain, and more recently still a sort of boho hiker's alternative to Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine. I suspect that our visit saw it at its busiest time ever. The first night, we camped on the crowded grounds of a grubby little hostel and counted ourselves lucky.


The next morning we set out into Los Glaciares National Park, and quickly discovered what's making El Chaltén an increasingly popular destination. The path winded upward and a verdant valley unfolded below in spectacular fashion, its bottom-river shimmering in the morning sunlight. We ground our way up the trail for nearly an hour before topping a ridge, and there it was, the Patagonia label in living color: the majestic Fitz Roy massif. From the overlook, the trail meandered into a wide valley for another hour, at the bottom of which was our destination, the suddenly crowded Poincenot campground.


After pitching our tent, we set off on a dayhike down the nearby Rio Blanca, a glacier-fed north-flowing torrent. The trail was less traveled than that we'd taken from El Calafate, and it rolled and rolicked along the banks, meandering into the trees and out onto the gravel bars. A mile from our campsite, we took a left fork into a side valley, traversing an enormous boulder field marked haphazardly with cairns. Eventually we gave up trying to follow the trail and scrambled our way upward to our destination, Laguna Piedras Blancas. It was a small lake, bounded on all sides by steep rocks and fed by an enormous glacier that peeked over a cliff and regularly dripped ice into the cerulean waters. I put my feet in and lost all feeling within seconds; the water couldn't have been more than one or two degrees above freezing. Fierce williwaws regularly blew down the hillsides and whipped the water into a frenzy, one even nearly pushing me in with its fury. The sky was clouding over, and threatening cumulonimbus peered over the peaks above. We hurriedly scrambled our way back down towards camp. This time it was a false alarm, and we ate our meal in pleasant sunshine and then watched the sun set over Fitz Roy.


The wind came back up through the night and blew ferociously, which is hardly noteworthy in Patagonia except that our tent was positioned near a dead and rotting tree, a fact I scarcely noticed during the day but recalled vividly in my sleeping bag at 2am. I slept fitfully and rose at 6am to look at Fitz Roy and the trail up to Lago de las Tres. I was planning to hike it early to watch the sun rise from the lake, but there was no point as it was clouded over. I went back to bed for another two hours and woke to clearing skies. I ate a quick breakfast, kissed Dawn goodbye - she had no desire to go up and down 1800' of mountainside before our hike out - and set off up the trail. Once across the Rio Blanco, it was a steady upward slog up switchbacks that alternated between clambering over basketball sized rocks and slipping on loose scree. I was to the top an hour after setting out from the campsite, and noted that only a few other people were there although the mountain was clearing off nicely. I talked to an Australian girl who'd been at the top since sunrise and had spent a chilly few hours huddling in the ferocious wind and mist. Now the wind-whipped lake was turning from steely grey to inviting royal blue before our eyes. I scrambled down a scree slope, refilled my canteen, dipped a tentative toe in the water, and abandoned any thought of taking a quick swim. I once skinny-dipped in a high mountain lake in Norway for five minutes and couldn't stop shivering for two hours; this was colder.


By the time I headed back down the trail, the mountain had cleared, the day had warmed appreciably, and hordes of Gore-Texed hikers were grinding their way up the trail. Stopping my descent every twenty feet to let hikers by was exhausting, and it took me longer to come down than go up. I was already sore when I arrived back at camp, but had only ten minutes rest before shouldering my pack and heading down the trail to town; Dawn had broken camp while I was gone. I was a bit disappointed to be leaving the Fitz Roy area after only one night, but it was better than nothing and what we did see was incredible. Actually, some of the very best views of the entire trip were enjoyed on our way out. We kept stopping to turn around and stare.


The trail out was a bit longer than we remembered and I was proper tired by the time we ambled back into El Chalén. We quickly revived ourselves with beef empanadas and a delicious local brown ale at a cute pizzeria/brewpub along the main drag. We had enough time before our bus to El Calafate to sample some ice cream made with that town's namesake berry, the Calafate. I slept solidly for the entire three hour bus ride, waking once near El Calafate to note with satisfaction that Fitz Roy was still visible in the stunningly clear air and warm evening light. The sun was finally beginning to set when we arrived around 10pm. We walked up to the America del Sur Hostel on a mesa overlooking the town from the east, and had just settled into their lounge with a nice Malbec when the cirrus clouds high overhead were suddenly set ablaze by the already-set sun behind the Andes. It was our last night in Patagonia, and it was a fitting sendoff. I hated to leave, it felt like we'd just arrived and there was so much to explore down here. We were a long way from home, though, and I guess the relative inaccessibility of Patagonia is much of its allure.


The next day we were originally supposed to go to Perito Moreno but since we'd already covered that, we spent the day in El Calafate. We should've gone to the glacier. El Calafate is a nice town, mind you, but perhaps a bit too nice in its rebirth as the tourist center of Argentinean Patagonia, a bit too far removed from its not-very-distant gaucho past. It has very much a ski-resort town feel to it despite the absence of any skiing nearby. There's a new casino, though, and lots of high-end condos being built for and sold to wealthy Porteños from Buenos Aires. We walked around, bought some souvenirs for family members - my most recent concession to middle aged, middle class tourist status - and had a fantastic steak dinner at a parilla for about the same price you'd pay at a Chili's in the States. We went back to the hostel and wrote emails, uploaded photos, played cards, and shared one last bottle of Malbec.


And then it was off to the airport, and a crowded MD80 to Buenos Aires. There are a very limited number of flights from Patagonia to the north, and this was one place I wasn't willing to play nonrev lotto; I'd sprung for full-fare tickets, which were about $150 per person a month in advance. I slept most of the three hour flight and awoke in time to see the lights of Buenos Aires as we made our approach around midnight. It was enormous, and reminded me of Los Angeles. We landed at the waterfront Gorge Newbery Airport and took a taxi to the nearby hostel I'd booked online. It turned out to be more of a flophouse than a hostel but the breakfast the next morning was surprisingly good. The coffee in particular was fantastic, a first for the trip.

Our day in Buenos Aires was a whirlwind. We took the metro at the beginning and end, and walked for miles and miles in between. It was a blissfully pleasant day after what had been several weeks of oppressive heat in BA. I liked the city immediately. It's like LA and Miami and Paris rolled into one. Dawn noticed the dirt and noise and pollution and crowds more than I did, and liked it less. We had the same opposite reactions to Bangkok.


We walked the boulevards and peered into churches and waved to some group of about a hundred crazy motorcyclists waving flags and honking their way around the Plaza de Mayo. We browsed open-air farmers and craft markets, lounged in shady squares, ogled leafy streets lined with opulent townhouses, ate street food, cooled off with ice cream on the waterfront, and amusedly observed hordes of worshipful fans kissing the grave of a certain Maria Eva Duarte de Perón...she was lucky to be played by Madonna, I think. And then one sweaty last push through the afternoon crowds to collect our bags, an even hotter ride on the Metro, and a bus to the airport. WidgetCo was completely full, true to form, so we were taking Aerolineas Argentinas to Miami. Or so we thought! One last time my limited grasp of Spanish bit me as we were shuffled between various agents, none of whom seemed to know how to retrieve our listing and all of whom sent us to a different queue that seemed to stand still, with me powerless to explain the situation in terms the agents would understand. We finally got seats 20 minutes before the flight and sprinted through customs and security to make it. We arrived in Miami as the sun rose on a new day, most of which would be spent trying to get back to Minneapolis, ultimately via Detroit.

I really enjoyed this trip, more than I expected. It whet my appetite for South America, but also convinced me I need to get serious about getting fluent in Spanish. Dawn just started graduate classes towards her Master's Degree so we expected this might be our last major trip in a while. Then we both ended up with her Spring Break off at the end of this month, along with our friends Brad and Amber, and a plan was hatched to go back to Thailand, which we visited over Spring Break 2007. So much for taking a break from traveling! But as I always say, going to Thailand is cheaper than staying home. In the meantime, I recently took a very different sort of five day trip, and one I suspect this blog's readers might be more interested in. Stay tuned.

In Patagonia - Part Two

Google "Patagonia," and the first result is the website of a clothing company by the same name based in Ventura, CA, some 5800 miles from the real Patagonia's northern border. Its logo is the outline of the Fitz Roy massif near El Chaltén, Argentina. The name was well chosen, for it evokes a wild, remote, and rugged land of rock and ice ripe for exploration by well-heeled adventurers... after a spendy shopping spree at their favorite outdoor clothing brand, of course. In tourist-hungry Chile, the name is similarly bandied about by those who profit on its allure. Chilean Patagonia's definition has expanded north to Los Rios Region, and includes such urban centers as Valdivia, Puerto Varas, and Puerto Montt; businesses and tourism boards claim the appellation even further north, in Temuco and Pucón. I expect that some day there will be a sign in the Santiago Airport that says "Welcome to Patagonia!"

To me, though, Patagonia begins where the road ends, and for most travelers that is the scruffy port city of Puerto Montt (there is one lonely gravel road south, the Carretera Austral, a potholed ribbon that winds 700 miles before petering out in the tiny outpost of Villa O'Higgins). Our adventures in this Patagonia began on the morning of Friday, 30 December, when we presented ourselves at the portside offices of Naviera Magallanes S.A., better known as Navimag. They are a shipping company first and foremost, but some years ago they realized there was a good deal of money to be made in bringing along tourists on the stunning 4-day sailing from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales. The spartan accommodations, frequent poor weather, bovine odors from the ship's cargo decks, and lack of amusements other than gazing at scenery and talking to fellow travelers have earned the Navimag mixed reviews from those more accustomed to luxury cruises. To Dawn and I it sounded like a fantastic adventure, and was one of our main reasons for coming on this trip.

In the Navimag offices we spied Sebastian, a German we had met on the bus to Pucón earlier that week. He had come to Puerto Montt the day before, while we had stayed 10 miles north in Puerto Varas. Sebastian introduced us to two friends he had met the previous day: Uli from Munich, and Su-Anne from near Arnhem, Netherlands. Su-Anne and Dawn hit it off immediately and were soon deep in conversation. We were taken to the ship on buses at noon, and hoisted anchor several hours early at 2PM. The weather was beautifully clear and warm as we steamed out of Puerto Montt and Mts. Orsono and Calbuco faded into the distance.


The M/V Evangelistas is a fairly compact ship at 360 feet long, and only the top three decks are used by passengers. The first of these, the boat deck, contains the majority of the sleeping accommodations. These range from first-class cabins with windows and private bathrooms to large shared dormitories and even open berths in the hallways. We opted to share a tiny, spartan 4-berth cabin; our roommates were a quiet Swiss couple that spent every waking moment on deck with field scope, binoculars, cameras, and birding guides and logs. Above the boat deck, the bridge deck contains the kitchen, cafeteria, crew quarters, and of course the bridge, which was open for passenger visits most of the time. The cafeteria served three square meals a day. We had heard that the food was fairly plain and were advised to bring plenty of snacks; most of the passengers embarked with overflowing grocery bags. In reality the cafeteria food was quite tasty, although generally of the "meat and potatoes" variety. We were usually too full to dip into our snacks.

We spent most of our spare time on the top deck - and not just because of the cozy pub with its comfy couches and communal tables. Aft of the pub is a huge open "terrace" with lines of benches, where passengers would congregate in good weather to chat, ogle the scenery, or play chess on the giant board. Forward of the pub is a windy and exposed observation deck, which overlooks the bow and was only crowded during the most scenic parts of the trip.

After unpacking and exploring the ship, we attended a lecture on Patagonian flora and fauna in the cafeteria. This was our introduction to the ship's fluently multilingual (English, Spanish, German, French, Italian) and infectiously enthusiastic naturalist. Within days almost everyone was playfully mimicking his frequent exclamation, "it's fantastic!" In this lecture he had a rather sombre announcement, however: the famous Torres del Paine National Park was burning in a massive wildfire, and was closed to visitors indefinitely. We'd heard rumors about this in Puerto Montt but this was our first confirmation. The plan had been to spend a few days trekking in Torres del Paine after our arrival in Puerto Natales; it was, along with the Navimag trip, our reason for coming to Patagonia. The closure put a hitch in our plans, but I assumed there were other worthy parts of Patagonia to see. We'd just have to play it by ear.


After dinner we bundled up and huddled on the forward observation deck, watching the sun dip over Chiloe Island to starboard. To our south, the iconic Volcán Corcovado reared up from the sea, its snowy summit turning pink in the sunset. We met two American brothers, Greg and Nick, and Greg's wife Torrie. In summer, Greg and Torrie are a park ranger and biologist, respectively, in California's Sierra Nevada mountains. In winter, they travel in South America for four months. This time they were being joined for two weeks by Nick and their parents. Besides this clan and ourselves, the only other apparent Americans on the boat were members of a raucous, hard-partying tour group that also included a few Brits and Aussies. The majority of the passengers were Europeans, with Germans and Swiss being particularly well-represented. There were some Chilenos and other South Americans, but they were a distinct minority. It was overall a friendly and interesting group. We met and chatted with quite a few people, and actually became good friends with several.


New Year's Eve Day dawned thinly overcast and eerily still with hardly a ripple on the mirror-like waters of the Moraleda Channel. Our surroundings had become more mountainous during the night, although the fjord was still quite wide at this point. There were absolutely no signs of civilization to be seen throughout the day, although the naturalist said there were a few fishing "villages" of two or three houses tucked into protected inlets. Su-Anne joined us on the forward deck and introduced two new friends, Fabien from Switzerland and Tanja from Frankfurt. In the afternoon, we turned into a side-channel to the west. As we neared the open South Pacific Ocean, the weather grew increasingly cloud, cold, and windy, with occasional rain showers. Dawn and I bundled up and lingered on the terrace with Su-Anne, Fabien, and Tanja. We snacked and drank wine, I taught Su-Anne American slang to supplement her excellent English, and Fabien and I swapped flying stories (he's a private pilot in Switzerland).


As we exited the fjord into open ocean, we began seeing humpback whales, or at least their spouts. Dawn proved to be rather eagle-eyed, as she was usually the first one to sing out that she saw a spout, prompting a mass stampede to her side of the ship. Later we were joined by a playful pod of dolphins. It was a nice distraction given the sudden lack of scenery and pitching motion of the ship. We had been warned to take Dramamine, as a low-pressure system off the coast was kicking up some swells. Dawn and I decided not to take it as we are not horribly susceptible to motion sickness and didn't want to be too drowsy for New Year's Eve. Su-Anne took the meds and was napping almost immediately. To pass the time Fabien and I played a few rounds of chess.


Both Dawn and I felt just fine while we stayed outside, but once it was dark we went into the pub to play cards with Fabien and Uli. It took less than an hour of being inside with my head down to get seasick; Dawn followed soon after. As midnight approached, the pub was rather subdued, with half the passengers passed out on Dramamine and the other half looking decidedly green. Only the party-hardy American tour group seemed unaffected, playing boisterous drinking games around a large table in the middle of the pub. It looked like New Year's Eve might be a bit of a bust.


About twenty minutes to midnight, Navimag crewmembers brought out champagne bottles and flutes and plastic party hats and noisemakers. The pub finally stirred to life, all shaking off seasickness and medication to ring in the new year properly. Tanja and Su-Anne reappeared, looking suddenly refreshed. A DJ set up loudspeakers and began playing dance music. I retrieved a bottle of champagne I'd squirreled away for the occasion. By midnight the dance floor was packed. Everyone counted down to the New Year in Spanish, and there were hugs and kisses and handshakes and toasts all around. Then the ship's horn began blowing, and everyone streamed outside to watch the Captain shoot celebratory red flares high into the night sky. Back inside, Fabien and Tanja and Dawn and I gathered to sing Su-Anne "Happy Birthday;" January 1st was her 30th. The ship's head steward appeared with a frosted cupcake with a candle on top. And then we went back into the pub and danced until 3AM on a packed dancefloor that was rolling 10 to 15 degrees each way. It was a rather memorable New Year's Eve. When we went to bed, we were at 47°18'S 75°18'W in the Golfo de Penas.


The mood onboard was understandably subdued in the morning. I ate breakfast with a Chilean couple in the nearly-empty cafeteria and went outside to take in our new surroundings. During the night we had sailed back into the fjords, and were now steaming down the Messier Channel. The terrain was higher and rougher-looking now. Mid-morning, we passed the derelict hulk of the Captain Leonidas, a Greek freighter that ran aground in 1968 on the only submerged rocks in the middle of a 4000' deep channel. It is now home to a multitude of cormorants and other seabirds, thousands of which swarmed aloft when our Captain blew the ship's horn.


Around noon we passed through the English Narrows, an odd-looking chain of low wooded hills draped across the channel with only a tight winding passage through them. Shortly thereafter, we sailed into view of Puerto Eden, the first civilization we'd seen since leaving Puerto Montt two days prior. Puerto Eden is a small fishing village of 176 souls, almost all Kawésquar (the nearly-extinct seafaring tribe that originally settled these fjords). Their only link with the rest of Chile is the once-a-week Navimag, which takes their fish to market, and brand-new cell phone service that began the week after our visit. Once the Evangelistas anchored off the port, we donned life jackets and transferred to wooden fishing boats, which took us to the town's small docks. We had an hour to walk around the town's wooden boardwalks (there are no roads), viewing the ramshackle houses and unique plants and flowers and greeting the villagers with "Feliz Año Nuevo!" We climbed a hill for a panoramic view of the village's wild environs. And then we headed back to the ship, which was soon steaming south through increasingly wild-looking terrain scrubbed of all but the hardiest vegetation.


The day was cloudy but pleasant, and nearly all the passengers were gathered on deck relaxing, drinking, and socializing. An hour south of Puerto Eden we turned east, then north into the Seno Eyre. We soon began seeing glimpses of the enormous Southern Patagonian Ice Field high in the mountains to our east, with large tidewater glaciers snaking down to side inlets. At the head of the sound, we saw a long, thin ribbon of ice, the destination for this side-trip: the Pio XI glacier. It grew and grew as we approached until it seemed impossibly immense; at this point the naturalist announced that we were two kilometers away! The passengers positively buzzed with excited energy as they crowded the forward deck and climbed the pub roof for a better view of the immense wall of blue ice that loomed over us as we approached ever closer through a sea teeming with floating bergs. The Pio XI is one of the few glaciers in the region that are advancing rather than retreating, although most of this advancing ice breaks off and floats away in the Seno Eyre. A chunk of ice the size of an apartment building tore away from the 150' high face and splashed into the aqua water with a resounding boom; the resulting wave noticeably rocked our 360' long ship. The Captain wisely backed off a bit as the passengers continued snapping pictures and exchanging hushed exclamations.


Too soon, we turned around and left the glacier in our wake. It was a fantastic experience, a highlight of the voyage and our New Year's Day. That night, we stayed up late chatting with our new friends in the pub and joining in Bingo Night in the cafeteria. After complaining of initial poor luck, Fabien won twice in a row, netting himself a nice Chardonnay and a fifth of Johnny Walker Red.


The last day of our voyage dawned cold and raw with dramatically angry grey skies, random bursts of rain, and wild gales of wind interspersed with calm interludes. The scenery fit the weather, for everywhere you looked were foreboding cliffs and mountains of bare rock worn into unnatural shapes by millennia of exposure to constant rain and wind. Occasionally the clouds would part just enough to spy a tongue of ice running down from even higher unseen peaks. The lack of vegetation rendered the scene in dramatic, photogenic monochrome. We stood on the foredeck in our windproof, waterproof jackets, snapping photos. I took care to watch the williwaws streaking across the water, not wanting to be caught unprepared by the frequent 60+ mph gusts.


In late morning we maneuvered through the White Narrows, a 80-meter crease in the rocks flung across an already-narrow fjord. We stood by the closed bridge door watching the Captain and the helmsman expertly guide our vessel through the passage; the quiet, alert professionalism of the crew reminded me of the atmosphere on a flight deck during a Cat II approach to minimums. Once out of the narrows, we were in the Seno Ultima Esperanza (Sound of Last Hope), the grim-sounding final segment of our passage. We ate one last lunch with our new friends, making plans to get together that night for dinner in Puerto Natales. The naturalist announced over the loudspeaker that now that we were within cell phone coverage, he'd been informed that the fire in Torres del Paine was mostly out but the park would likely remain closed for a few days yet. I'd already decided that we would cross the Argentinean border to El Chaltén and do our hiking in Los Glaciares National Park, under the famed Fitz Roy Mountain.


We packed our backpacks in our cramped little room and joined the others on deck to watch our approach to Puerto Natales. The sun came out a little but the raw, cold wind and apparent lack of vegetation on shore gave the place a forlorn, dismal look. Like so many places I've traveled, it was nothing like how I imagined it'd be. Nevertheless, I was eager to begin the next phase of our adventures in Patagonia.