Datta Boy Francie - Get Stuck In!

We left El Calafate eventually on Sunday afternoon carrying a straggler. We were actually pretty lucky to get out of this touristic chintzville as early as we did. The standard route north from Calafate for the cash strapped backpacker is to backtrack south to Rio Gallegos and get a connecting bus (which leaves at 4am) to Commodore Rivadavia and then get another connecting bus to Mendoza, Santiago in Chile or like we needed to do, to Bariloche. We had been to both Rio Gallegos and Commodore Rivadavia and my fear of ever having to return to either town was marginally greater than my general aversion to backpacking….I mean backtracking. The reason the bus companies take such an illogically circumvent route is that the large tour buses get North quicker by hitting the better paved roads of the Atlantic coast than by trundling up the fabled but unpaved Ruta 40 along the rocky spine of the Andes. So the added expense of a quick flight became instantly preferable to some depressing long distance 30 hour backtracking exercise or a gruelling, dusty and apparently pretty boring trip up the Ruta 40.

People with reading sickness in Calafate airport

We knew there was a flight north directly to Bariloche every Sunday. Leaving it until we returned from Chalten on the previous Friday to book it was probably unwise but we lucked out and got a reasonably priced ticket for the Sunday flight - oddly, purchased at the bus station just after we landed back from El Chalten. Despite the quality of service and abundance of routes for internal flights in Argentina, this would be our first flight since landing in BA in December and actually my first ever internal flight in any country.

M gets a surprise roadside attack of reading sickness

Our straggler was the middle aged traveller-nervosa on a 1 year sabbatical from an apparently high pressure, high responsibility post in Zurich and liked nothing more than fishing and golf but talking about fishing and golf. Like the lusty sailors of old, he had a rod and a half set of clubs in every town. He possessed a British soap opera accent - despite his stated Scottish heritage and Northern Irish education - the kind you put on when you want to appear wishy washy or half facultied. During a communal kitchen conversation with M, he had heard that we'd be getting a cab from the hostel to the airport the following morning and he kindly proffered his companionship to save on taxi fare. He then very kindly proffered his companionship on the plane (more fishing stories mixed with some particle acceleration trivia) and on to the hostel we'd chosen in Bariloche. We almost ended up sharing a dorm with this guy - all as a result of a random conversation over a stove in a hostel - but for the grace of an almost fully booked Periko's with one bed free in one dorm and 2 free in another. It's interesting the sense of helplessness you feel when the hostel staff, seeing you've arrived together, do their utmost to try and accommodate you together even though you desperately want to shake off your newly acquired companion. The randomness of hostel relationships or acquaintances, which up to now have been really positive, interesting and informative, cuts both ways I suppose. He even suggested that dining vegetarian would be OK by him - ie. he'd very accommodatingly eat whatever food we were preparing that night. Bless his veggie friendly soul. Basically he was a Walter Mitty character with parasitic tendencies. Boring and cheap is an unforgivable combination on its own. Add a vocal obsession for fishing to the mix and I couldn’t get away from him fast enough. He left the following day to go fishing on the Rio Grande not before causing an international incident at breakfast over someone not ordering him a taxi. Poor Walter must have thought he was staying at the Ritz.

We spent the first full day in Bariloche acclimatising to the relative warmth again after our extended travels in Long John Patagonia and Thermal Tierra del Fuego. To give y’all some perspective on the season here in the Southern hemisphere, we're currently (as I’m pretty sure y’all are) coming to the end of March which, weather wise, equates to the end of September at home - almost the second month of Autumn.

The car pictures are back

Bariloche is a year round resort town, with student partying, trekking and watersports in the Summer and skiing and snowboarding in the Winter. It’s pitched kind of chaotically on the rolling hills overlooking the magnificent lake Nahuel Huapi. The town council seem to be trying to force some tentative link to the Swiss Alps down the throat of all visitors… the architecture is all pseudo Alpine log cabins, exposed beams and acutely pitched roofs. Apparently the secondary industry after the touristic pot of gold is the ancient Argentinean lost art of chocolate making. Milka’s PR push is in overdrive here with entire shops decked out in Milka’s colours, devoted to trying to convince you to purchase buckets of Swiss chocolate seeing as you’re kind of in the Alps. This is a bizarre turn to the previously noted Argentinean obsession with all things European.


Our main reason for visiting Bariloche was that it would break up the grand trip north. There was also some apparently great trekking opportunities in the area. We decided on a 2 day trek upto Refugio Frey – a more interesting 2 day trek would probably have been up to the Tronador – we figured this out afterwards. We scored some very allusive bencina blanca fuel for our stove, packed our tent, sleeping bags and warm clothes and we were again on our way into the wilds of Argentina to walk around in circles. We took a public transport city bus from Bariloche to the small skiing resort of Catedral – a trip of 20km – where we would grab a cable car up the mountain and then a chairlift up to Refugio Lynch to start the trek. The bus was 30 minutes late, fully packed when it did arrive and promptly broke down just when we got out of town. We had to wait a further half hour for a replacement bus to arrive. Yet again Milka chocolate came to the rescue to settle our nerves. The first days hike turned out to be more of a rock climbing expedition than anything resembling a leisurely hike. We hiked up under the cables for the ski runs and came to a sign which basically said you’re on your own after this. We spent the next 3 hours walking across the banks of a 1000m deep valley on a very narrow and infirm gravel pathway with nothing to stop you and your Fisher Price camp set on your back from rolling and tumbling down the boulders to your death or disfigurement at the valley floor like an over ambitious, over laden ant.

Ant M defies gravity....again

You really needed a head for heights and I figured out that mine aint great. Looking down actually made me dizzy a couple of times so I swan necked it for the first hour of trepidation along the valley wall. We’d walked up and down steep valleys before but walking across one proved to be an entirely different proposition. It was only then that the trip got interesting…. After traversing the valley, we were presented with an appealing vista of moraine, boulders and outcrops of pointed rock which formed the side of the mountain. This vista became instantly less appealing when we realised there was no path to be seen and that according to our map we needed to round this unforgiving pot bellied mountainside to progress. 10 minutes into our challenge we met some Ozzies who looked shook, they all had that mixture of madness and fear in their eyes of a racehorse that’s just refused the big one. They were turning back and seemed aggrieved that nowhere had they been warned about the difficulty and rockiness of this trek. We had to agree. None of the guidebooks or maps or information provided by the local trekking associations made any reference to the extended boulder clambering or scrambles across steep moving banks of loose sand and gravel. We decided to continue but several times I thought it might be wiser to turn back. We both got heavily grazed knees and arms from the rocks. Our wedding rings even got badly scraped from grabbing rocks to haul us upwards or through narrow gaps in the granite. And all this hardship with full packs on our backs. The tent got a bit of a hammering aswell attached as it was to the outside of my pack. And our boots look like they’ve aged about 10 years such was the abuse they took in this one day – but without them we’d have been screwed.

Irrelevant Pictorial Distraction

Several times the only way to make progress was to unstrap your bag, haul yourself up to a ledge, generally whacking your kneecap in the process and then winch your pack up after you. As physically demanding as all this was you also really needed to keep your wits about you and choose each step carefully lest you plummet to your death. This took a lot of concentration. You needed to stop every 1 or 2 minutes to try and get an overview of where you were headed using the red and yellow dots painted 50m apart on the rocks as your only guide. We eventually made it to a point where it looked like there could be no more uphill. Sweat soaked relief all round. We took a rest at a beautiful lake and convinced ourselves that yet again the hardship was worth it.

Where's Maisie?

Honestly these pictures don't do our trauma justice. Generally when things were at their scariest and the drops the steepest I was holding on for dear life rather than getting snap happy. The descent down to Refugio Frey however also turned out to be problematic. The challenging terrain changed not a bit, except for the fact that it was now downhill. Treacherously steeply downhill. At several points it felt like we were descending a quarry wall. Again it played havoc with my ageing knees. When we eventually hit the valley floor, scenic and all as it was surrounded by small lakes and interesting flora, we still had another hour of walking to do before we could pitch our tent and collapse ourselves. We got to the refugio, a lonely and small stone building dwarfed by the mountains and rocks on all sides and which looks like it’s been in situ for approximately forever, just before a downpour of rain.

Refugio Frey

Refugio S and M

Pitching the tent on rocks was interesting aswell. A couple of bent tentpins later and we had wedged our tent between a rock and a gorse bush on a vaguely level plot beside a lake and all was good again. Refugio Frey is a legendary hotspot for rock climbers – real ones, skilful, skinny and lithe unlike us grazed, ungraceful pretenders. They hike up, sleep overnight in the refugio and get up at the crack of dawn to scale sheer rock faces. There’s a complex etiquette involving teams of two and ropes and who leads and who follows but it’s fascinating to watch. Limbs launch sidewards like spider’s legs as these elastic men and women acrobatically secure foothold or handgrip enough to make upward progress. The rock above our tent must have been 700 or 800 feet straight up. These guys were scaling the top of this rock in about an hour and a half. Then they’d hang out with the bemused condors for a while and abseil down in about 20 seconds. Net gain in altitude zero. Net accomplishment – pretty high.


When the climbers congregated they formed the most oddball collection of people gathered round the huge stove out of the biting winds. Beards were a common element and also a wild and independent look in their eyes. Not the friendliest of souls but you could tell there was a huge amount of mutual respect between them. These were obviously people who had taken the experience of the great outdoors and the challenges of nature to an extreme. Anyone can walk up a mountain trail and hang out at altitude in awe of the scenery with, generally in the company of several other happy campers. It takes an admirable amount of energy, skill, determination and balls to get where these guys get, with the only reward seeming to be the stone cold solitude and obviously the superior views. Respect. We hung around the following morning watching these guys pushing spandex to the limits of its design and then strolled the 4 or 5 hours down the mountain again to catch the bus back to civilization.

Diggin' The Nature Scene

The buses back ran every 90 minutes. We somehow managed to time it so we reached the end of a 5 hour hike and even though we had to run the last 500 metres, no fun when you’ve no blisters left to pop, jumped straight onto a bus which was just pulling out. A shower at the hostel was our immediate reward and then on to our victory dinner. One of the faces that keeps popping up wherever we do on the Gringo trail is a girl called Nic. She’s a lovely girl of British / Zambian / Gambian extraction who we originally bumped into in the campsite all the way back in Ushuaia, then in the middle of nowhere on the Chalten / Fitz Roy hike and most recently at Periko’s hostel in Bariloche. She kindly agreed to join us for dinner and we headed to a Mexican restaurant which happened to be in the middle of a cocktail happy hour. Half price frozen strawberry margheritas all round, a couple of times. Anything in South America that’s not pizza or pasta, no matter what state of freshness or how ill prepared, is a complete joy. Even if sometimes you end up swatting bluebottles and house flies maniacally from your food knowing that if the flies are hanging out in the eating area that they're most definitely in residence in the rich pickings of a dirty kitchen. A rule of thumb is to avoid sitting near the swinging door of the kitchen. The glimpses of hygiene imperfection can completely ruin your already hold-the-nose meal. Greasy fingers and grease proof napkins which wouldn’t even absorb dust. General observations of the food we’ve experienced down here.

The Market - El Bolson

The Mexican meal was actually quite tasty. We had a very pleasant evening bitching about Israelis, snorers, and swapping tales of the more interesting characters we’ve met thus far on our travels. Nic had a funny story about some Italian guy who she met in Ushuaia who has been travelling forever in the same pair of almost fossilised cotton pants. Passing through Peru, he decided to buy a horse and cart to take him on his journey through that fair country. His primary reason for investing in this form of transport was because it was very cheap to do so. But also, it’d be a fucking blast man! He had to ditch the horse and cart idea 2 weeks later because – and this is the precise reason he gave – the horse kept going to the left. One cannot traverse the borders of Peru efficiently on a cart with a horse which keeps going to the left. Of course, there’s no possible way that it could have been his horse handling skills, the horse was obviously retarded. Funny stuff. We retired for more scoops to the ubiquitous Irish bar – generally the only bars here with any atmosphere – and were enjoying our first drink when a hardy handsome Canadian gentlemen politely requested the pleasure of our company.

......Roger From Kildaaaaaaare....

This is where it gets weird. It turns out he was part of a group of fly fishing medical professionals who travel the world on fishing expeditions – kind of like Fly Fishing Freemasons if you like. I was fascinated not by the fishing aspect of things but by the far flung and disparate groups’ means of co-ordinating their several trips a year (no surprise, the internet) so I was asking all kinds of noddy questions with genuine interest. He mentioned that 2 of the group were from Vancouver – he himself is the dentist in a town called Russell, in the province of Manitoba in Canadia. Something clicked in my head about a conversation M had with her dentist just before she’d left Vancouver which she’d reported to me. Her sage dentist advised staying away from Santiago and concentrating on Argentina. How was he so well informed? Well, he spent a lot of time down in South America fly fishing. Bingo! I asked Ron what were the names of his Vancouver Freemason Fly Fishing Lodge members and the name of one Ernest (Ernie / Ernesto) Schmidt was mentioned…. M’s Vancouver dentist who was also on this trip but not present in the bar! What an interesting and crazy co-incidence.

Nic, Ron and M

We spent another very interesting hour or so in rapt conversation with Ron (who apparently has the softest beard on the planet) who patiently answered my entry level fishing conundrums like - has he ever caught the same fish twice (yes)? What’s the fascination with fishing (another apparently zero net gain sport as they throw the fish back)? He also put to bed any nagging doubts I had about the source of some food poisoning I’d had in BA (it was the chips at the tango club). Ron, the epitome of the Canadian gentleman, very kindly got the tab for our drinks when we puffed out around 1am citing exhaustion and frozen margherita madness as our excuse. Ron if you’re reading this, thanks again for the drinks and for your memorable description of your hometown in Winter as “cold as a witches’ tit”.

We shipped out of “touristic” Bariloche the following day, heading for the much heralded hippy / vegetarian paradise of El Bolson about 120kms south. Well. It turned out that the only thing this place had going for it was our Arcadian campsite surrounded by the tallest poplars you’ve ever seen. Poplars are sewn prodigiously around Patagonia purely for their excellent wind sheltering properties. So constant and fierce are the winds that you sometimes see poplars sporting a fetching backcombed effect , rather than growing towards the sun or as gravity intended, the branches grow in the direction of the prevailing wind. Windswept and interesting…… a phrase Clodagh used to use regularly. Anyone anywhere know where Clodagh is or what she’s doing these days? I hope she’s happy and still both windswept and interesting. It’s so nice on a sunny day to have no clouds just the welcome shade of treetops. So anyway…..Artesian Market my hole. A migration of chip vans from the slurms in the morning as we walked into town from the campsite took the wholesome edges off any notions we may have entertained of having an organic Vegetarian feast. We did buy the heaviest and most unpackable shaped thing we could find. It’s pretty amazing what beauty can be produced with a chisel, a fist and a soft piece of wood.

M took this from the tent - El Bolson

So yeah, El Bolson in unstructured ramblings….. Crusty culture is alive and well. Kids dogs and adults all sharing the same empty bottle of shampoo. Felt rolls of cloth stuffed with their “artesenal” wares. Touristic. Touristical. Lock jaw clips pinning linen to metal frames. You like puppy? Make beautiful sandwich. Rollerskates and arrowback shoes. El Bolson is a parody of a hippy town with tourism the new "ism" from the East. Skinny greybeards with eyes disillusioned as ever peeking out from between their plaited ponytails. Bald patches from overthought. Filthy multicoloured striped baggy cotton pants do not obfuscate your alcoholism. Despite their generally admirable decision to take a parallel route off life's 8 lane highway, crusties to me always sully any impression of an idealistic soul with their propensity for always politely asking for more than you're prepared to give. Whether it's a swig from your last bottle of beer, or a couple of cigarettes when they very obviously only have one mouth. They seem to get on just fine with dogs though. El Bolson seems to me a confused town. Just off the gringo trail it still hosts its fair share of ogling over-thrifty backpackers foaming at the mouth for an original experience solely for bragging rights in the hostel common areas (or on their blog!). The honest hard working locals don’t seem over eager to interact with the hard thinking hippies on reality sabbaticals. Life is full of wont be backs. And El Bolson was definitely a wont be back.

All Souls Poker Tournament - El Bolson

We walked the town backwards looking for even one of the lauded Vegetarian oases on Sunday afternoon and ended up walking back to the campsite to cook our own. Very disappointing. The deserted El Bolson campsite was a very welcome reprieve from a crowded hostel dorm however. It was a semi functioning farm of sorts with apple trees, and several wheelbarrows full of walnuts and racks full of other interesting fruits lying around drying in the sun. There was also shed loads of these things tearing around :

Rare shot of a bird on rollerblades

You lose so much stuff in hostels – alarm clocks, individual flip flops, earplugs, bobbins, really important pieces of string. God knows where they get to but if it’s the case that whatever you’ve lost has fallen down the side of the bed or, heaven forbid, under the bed, you write it off as a sacrifice to the gods of gristle, dust and darkness. You don’t even think about it, you just do. There should be no grimace faced searching on hands and knees through the carpet of dust in the darkest corners of the dorm floor. Anything you may retrieve – if it isn’t someone else’s, will be covered in dust and hair and the shedded skin of costume changing insects. Besides, the dust gods will not be happy. Hostels equate to forensic anarchy. You’ll never see an episode of CSI “Wherever” set in a hostel. Ever. Although a missing block of cheese or half bottle of wine is rarely cause for involving the Feds anyways. Early morning ship outs are proving problematic aswell with a remarkable amount of our (M’s) possessions being written off as collateral damage. Our consideration for the sleeping patterns of our fellow dormers (which is incidentally very rarely reciprocated) means we don’t turn on the light as we pack our stuff, we speak in pre-dawn whispered whispers and we don’t take the opportunity to check amongst the cluster bombs of others possessions for elements of our own which may have become entangled. And that’s just the start of our issues with hostels. Short beds for tired legs is another one of mine. And snoring. I could write for hours on the misery I have been exposed to as a result of snoring. I’ve come up with a plan involving water pistols which should do the trick though. You snore, you get squirted in the dark by an unknown pistolist from an unknown corner of the room – that’d be me, wearing a leather glove to throw off the forensics people. You wake up (mission accomplished) with a wet ear and I don’t even have to climb down from my two story duplex bunk bed (I thought I’d said goodbye to bunk beds forever when I was 10 years old) to poke you in the ribs. Oh and more hostelling fun : yesterday I headed down to the communal showers to be told to return in 10 minutes as the showers were being fumigated. Nice.

Think about that one for a minute folks

And our hostel issues are just the beginning. Maybe we’re starting to get tired from all the travelling. It’s not so much the travelling as the disruption I suppose. Living constantly out of a packed bag, constantly shared living space, the half sleep on speeding buses and the ensuing screaming matches with the tip crazy baggage handlers. Yesterday for example, on arriving in Mendoza I went to retrieve our baggage from the under-bus storage, moderately dishevelled after an overnight 18 hour bus journey. I queued patiently like everyone else. It was raining heavily and when my turn came I saw 3 of our bags thrown on the wet oily floor of the bus depot. The one missing bag – my rucksack with tent attached – was lying in a pool of discoloured water under some galvanised panels in the luggage compartment of the bus. Naturally my first instinct is to go and try and rescue my stuff from such unnecessary hardship. Bad idea. Just as I had grabbed the straps, I got an unmerciful shoulder into the ribs, followed swiftly by an elbow dessert. It was a tackle that a county footballer at home would be proud of and the perpetrator, the hispanic Francie Bellew who was the baggage handler, stood looking at me with a smug that’ll-soften-your-cough look on his face as he pretended to busy himself with other passenger’s luggage. These guys aren’t employed by the bus companies or the bus stations. They’re generally residents of the slums adjacent to most large bus stations and they seem to eke out an existence from the paltry tips awarded by western backpackers. They’re basically answerable to no one. Not even me, screaming abuse at him as he responded in kind albeit in Spanish. Calling me that thing you called me means you don’t get a tip.

The last blog entry took a record 6 attempts to publish. I’m publishing this from the 5 star Park Hyatt Hotel in Mendoza, just around the corner from our hostel - the common area here is a little cleaner :) This is becoming more like work everyday. I had several instances in El Calafate and Bariloche of waiters refusing to give me a network key until I bought a coffee. Fair enough I hear you cry but when you plug the key in and you cant detect a signal you’ll hear ME cry scam. It maddens me that these places boldly advertise wifi (or wiffy as it’s pronounced down here) on their doors but yet cannot guarantee a signal. Their floor staff avoid eye contact and look very worried if asked to help troubleshoot even the simplest of issues – “Let me go look at the server” was their most common escape. Fair enough they're not techies but if a café offers a service they should have someone on hand to guarantee its delivery. For the blog the words arent a problem but you really need a solid connection to upload the images…hence my 6 attempts.

Welcome to wherever we are today

So that was a wandering incohesive update on our wandering incohesive travels. Despite all the first world complaints in these second and third world countries we’re still really enjoying ourselves. I’ll throw up another entry soon about Mendoza - the most famous wine producing area of Argentina where we've spent the past 5 days. We’re leaving here tomorrow to go to Valparaiso in Chile and we’ll be in Easter Island this time next week. We were just saying we’ll have to take a holiday when we get back from Easter Island because that will mark 4 weeks of some pretty hardcore travelling. But who’s complaining?

Not Us

El Bolson

Dents in My Zen

So….After our wanton luxuriating for the last couple of nights in Puerto Natales we jumped on a bus which would take us across the border again back into Argentina to a town called El Calafate. It’s not a particularly pretty town and it’s a little more expensive here than what we’re used to in Argentina. Generally down here when it comes to the towns, less dust means more expensive. El Calafte’s main claim to fame is it’s proximity to the most spectacular glacier in South America (Perito Moreno) , and the second largest glacier in South America (Uppsala). It was very weird being back in Argentina after 2 weeks experiencing the rounder faces and broader smiles of the Chilenos. As we were checking out of the hotel in Natales, the guy at the desk (Juan Thomas I believe he was called) was full of chat and encouragement about the Argentine ladies even as M stood at my shoulder with a bemused look on her face. He had to comically steady himself against the desk a couple of times so enthusiastically was he swooning. Yeah, so Argentina is still here and most of the people, including the fabled Argentinean ladies, are still busy smelling themselves.

Jesper and M - Lago Roca

We got into town pretty late on the Saturday and all the decent hostels were full so, myself, M and Jesper, through no fault of our own, ended up in the hostel from hell. It was the kind of place that when you walked in, there was this smell which made you look to see who’s taken off their shoes. And no one has. Picture a room 2 metres by 2 metres with 2 bunk beds at right angles on adjacent walls leaving approximately1 square metre of floor space in the middle of the room for 3 people to socialise and prepare for bed. When you stood on the bottom bunk, there was about 6 inches of clearance between your head and the ceiling meaning, as a tall man you needed at least a 3 year apprenticeship in the Chinese circus just to manoeuvre yourself into the top bunk. M had night terrors, I had the fear of God on the top bunk, with a dry mouth, a full bladder and an open window at my arse and Jesper had an uncomfortable so-so night’s sleep aswell. We had booked a day trip to the Glacier (Perito Moreno) which left at 8am the following morning. We went for dinner and drinks with Jesper and Betsy a film person from Brooklyn who we’d met on the bus, so it meant we thankfully only had to spend 4 hours in our stifling, malodorous prison cell.

It was a pretty dull day for our daytrip to Perito Moreno. Our minibus took us deep into the badlands of Parque National De Los Glaciares and we were all glad of the slow rocking motion of the bus as it travelled at a snail’s pace over the unsealed gravel road for the first 3 hours. It gave us a chance for some much needed shut eye. Jesper took one nice photo of the 2 of us out on the boat in the rain with the glaciar as a backdrop and that’s really all we have to show for 12 hours round trip. Not a day well spent although Maeve seemed to get a lot more out of the glacier experience than I did.

Perito Moreno Glaciar (last known sighting of M's hat)

We got back into town and hit the Supermercado just before it closed for provisions for our trekking in El Chalten. Jesper bought way too much soup – he blames me for mentioning once in passing that the odd cup a soup may be a pleasant mountainside refreshment.

Hiker's Herald : Packet Soup Sale – Cuppa Soup’s SLASHED!

We were tired and hungry and shopping for food when hungry generally yields very mixed results. But at least we had our provisions and after a night at the El Chalten Hostel (there’s a long and lesson filled story attached to how we extricated ourselves from the apparently binding contract at the hostel from hell) a much nicer log cabin effect monster hostel just up the street, we were on our way on an early morning bus to El Chalten.

Driver Suffocation Prevention on Bakpacker's Bus

El Chalten is a very young town, founded in 1985. They were still paving the main street, or upgrading it at least, during our stay. The town is about 150km from El Calafate but you’re still in the Glaciar National Park. It exists solely to service the hordes of trekkers who descend on the area to do the Fitz Roy hike. Interestingly though there’s no bank in the town, which means there’s no ATM. Which wouldn’t be a show stopper if any of the businesses took credit card payments. Which they don’t – not even the hotels. So you have the bizarre scenario of a town whose existence primarily depends on the dollars of the moneyed North American or European tourist but yet doesn’t provide them with the facility to harvest these dollars from their own bank accounts. So, if you don’t know about the lack of banks in El Chalten, you literally hit town with whatever pesos are in your pocket and hope for the best. A lot of people got caught out and the tips for the waitresses were pretty light as every peso counted in (resounding deep movie trailer voice)….The Town Without A Bank.


We had a quick lunch and gave a quick call home, threw on our packs and we were away again on our second big trek in as many weeks. I stumbled across a supermarket which hired cheap trekking poles and picked up a set to help me avoid any further knee trauma. They proved to be absolutely invaluable and even though they make you look like a geriatric wannabe super hero I’m converted. They take something like 60% of the weight off your knees on downhills and enable you to use your upper body on flats and uphills to propel you along like Seabiscuit, ears pinned behind you in the breeze. One thing we found about the treks in the park were that the times given for each of the stages were cruelly inaccurate – a sign saying “Campsite 2 hours” would be followed 2 and a half hours later by a sign saying “Campsite 1 hour”. Although we cant complain too much because the landscape through which we were sweating was absolutely beautiful.

In God's Country

Day 1 was a decent uphill trek approx 3 hours which started by walking up the main street of El Chalten to the trailhead. We ended up at Camp De Agostini (named after an Italian priest who single handedly trekked, photographed and most importantly mapped a lot of these trails in the early part of the twentieth century), a very lovely campsite on the sandy banks of Rio Fitz Roy. We got the tent up, changed and had dinner before it got really cold – when the sun sets here the temperature plummets and its time to scurry into your layered up lair in your tent. These days wherever we pitch our tent, that’s our home (I’m tellin’ you that’s our home). We’re genuinely more comfortable, warm and happy pitched on the side of a mountain with a stove cooked meal in our bellies than we are in some of the hostels we’ve stayed in and we actually look forward to laying down for the night – an experience which Jesper seems to share (he’s got the same stove and same brand of tent as us so we sit and have campfire gear conversations).

Day2 we got up early had some very Ready Brek like porridge and headed up an hour each way trek overlooking Lago Torre and the powerful looking Glaciar Grande and the very imposing Cerro Torre – shrouded as it was in patchy cloud. We spent a very deep half hour contemplating the large block of ice with the wind whipping around our ears. Chocolate and peanuts were our reward. Down we came again, had lunch and headed off towards Poincenot campsite, approx 3 hours away. The first hour and a half was a real killer. It was a real struggle up some of the hills, sweat flowed profusely with the rucksack sitting like a passive overweight jockey on your back waiting for the glory of the home straight.

Pat Eddery At Rest

We got to camp pretty late and it was starting to get cold and dark so I wasn’t in the best of form to join Maeve in rejoicing at the first sighting of the magnificent Fitz Roy peak or Cerro Fitz Roy as it’s formally known. It was slightly overcast anyway and the following couple of days were to prove much more amenable to mountain spotting. We had some really loud, arrogant, ignorant Israelis pitch just beside us and it took them a good 3 hours to shut up and go to bed. That’s the 3rd time we’ve had problems with Israelis (who generally tend to be younger and go travelling in groups after their obligatory 2 year stint in the Israeli army) and anyone you talk to tends to have the same less than flattering opinion about them. Loud, arrogant and generally unfriendly. I would add hirsute to the pot of unflattering adjectives. They eventually got the hint after a cacophony of shhhhs arose from most of the tents on the campsite around midnight and we eventually got to sleep looking forward to the highlight of the hike – trekking up to Lagos los Tres to see Fitz Roy in all its glory the following morning.

Porridge Alchemy

Day 3 – we knew that we had a strenuous 1.5 hour hike up to Lagos Los Tres but we also knew we had the rest of the day to recover as we’d decided to stay another night in Poincenot. The trek up was tough but we didn’t have jockeys weighing us down. I have to say that for both the Torres trip and the whole Fitz Roy trip we were absolutely blessed with the weather. It’s coming into Autumn time down here, so aside from the generally unpredictable Patagonian weather, you’re not guaranteed anything when it comes to clear days providing stunning views. Day 2 was a crisp clear day. Day 3 was a real Summer’s day with the sun splitting the stones and literally not one cloud in the bluescreen sky. They say that the hole in the ozone is far more pronounced down here so any exposure to mid day sun is not just ill advised but actually dangerous. We covered up well and splashed on the factor 60 but I still got some interesting blisters on the backs of my hands just from the sun. Anyways – after much sweating and chocolate breaks we approached the ridge at the lookout point which overlooks Lago des los Tres and gives you a scintillating view of Fitz Roy.



You know those motivational posters on the walls of boardrooms and meeting rooms in most offices around the world which feature peaceful lakes and majestic mountain peaks in morning light with some corny slogan or mantra at the bottom like a health warning on a pack of cigarettes? Well, we had a meeting of the board of S&M inc. at the base of Fitz Roy except the backdrop was real. Real life affirming stuff. This is why we’re here. This is how insignificant it all is in comparison. This is how good a team we’ve become. This is why we’ll both need hip replacements before we’re 40. It’s absolutely incredible the clear headedness which exposure to nature in its purest and most powerful form induces. Not to get too highminded about it but it bent my zen and clicked some fundamental braincogs back into gear. It’s all downhill from here.

The payload - the view of Cerro Fitz Roy across Lagos de los Tres

We got up for 630 am the following morning to see the sunrise over the peaks. So cold. 2 pairs of socks and leather boots, hats and gloves and still all your extremities are numb. But here's what it looked like :

Worth The Numbness

Oh – this just occurred to me. Don’t let the fact that we’re wearing the same clothes in ALL the pictures (both this trip and last) make you think that A) we’re in penury and cant afford a change of clothes or B)that all the photos we’re posed in front of backdrops in some studio all on the same day and we’ve never even seen a trail. The clothes we’re wearing are our wet set. They’re made from the same lightweight but durable material as space ships and microchips and the inside of fridges and they make you 45lbs lighter when you put them on. They’re also the stinkiest outfits at the local launderette right now. Mine even has a special cape which doesn’t interfere with your mullet when you unfurl it at full tilt. Nah they’re not high tech at all. But we DO have other clothes. I suggested we bring clothes for a costume change for the photoshoot but M said we if we did, we wouldn’t be able to carry the chocolate so that was a no brainer……

My Cape Malfunctioning Painfully At 30,000 Feet

Also I’m conscious of the fact that suddenly out of nowhere this has become like some kind of a trekking blog. But that’s more a side effect of where we are and the opportunities for crazy hikes on your door step. We’ve decided we absolutely love the whole walking thing and are grabbing with both hands and one leg each while we’re here. We’re even thinking of extending our stay in Bariloche to take in some more trek-tastic National Parks but we haven’t really considered the knock on effects of that on our time in places like Bolivia and Peru yet. M says that trekking is like a religion in these parts with trekkers undertaking punishing pilgrimages to big rocks, mountain peaks or just the perfect view to seek some kind of spiritual connection or redemption. It’s definitely big business in Patagonia and rightly so. Everyone you meet is on a mission to complete the next trek, swapping tips and pointers and experience. It’s kind of addictive though. The amount of times you get the feeling you’re literally wandering through a postcard, a heavily photoshopped postcard at that, as all around you in every direction as far as the eye can see you have these wonders of nature towering above you, eerie dead forests surrounding you, valleys with complex systems of criss crossing rivers below you and always the bracing Patagonian winds to prevent your mind wandering further than your legs can carry it . It’s powerful stuff.

The final day trek downhill was pretty hardcore on the knees with one and a half and two feet steps down the mountain for over an hour. We stumbled back in to the town, dust lining the inside of our eyelids, dropped our stuff and headed straight for a piping hot home made pizza and a dinna doke making sure we had enough pesos cobbled together to get a bottle of water for our crackers and cheese dinner – leftovers from the hike. All good.

Sunrise on the bus out of El Chalten

Peadar you were asking where we get the time to write such verbose postcards. When your sitting on a bus for 5 or 10 hours or sitting around a hostel waiting for a flight you get plenty of time to act as a stenographer for the twiddling thumbs of your brain. Watch…
Early morning bus trip Chalten to Calafate with the ipod on shuffle hence the interjection of random italicised lyrics: Here She Comes Now. B Fleischmann rocking the desert sunrise as he rocked the airborne sunrise on our flight down to SA. Soft touch down throw. Bumpy roads through dusty sunlight. The upholstery’s primary colours radiant, drawing the bleary eyed passengers into their own souls. HGV drivers shouted directions window to window. Dreads, meat farts, trigger finger sunsets. Ear plugs for teary eyes. Nearly 3 months in. The dirt is on fire again. A wash, a self administered haircut, a leatherman pedicure and the world is a different place. The opportunities for silent discos on moving buses which an headphone splitter provides. Fags in the jacks. Pretty fonts for dire warnings. Puma runners. Handmade breakfasts by misconstrued ne’er do wells. Hotels by bus stops. We are in Patagonia forever. Unwashed beauty queens. Alex’s Diarrhea – Gick Fever. Shmaeve, spork, foon, spfork. When it rains it pours in Yuma Arizona. Sand in your mouth as you board the pre dawn bus. Disappearing into the sunrise. Deerhoof. Betsy Brooklyn. Pookey-Ookey. Mountain Goats in Patagonia. You can even get used to postcard landscapes. Spas in Natales. Broken-in boots albeit with scars. A real page turner. A real page downer. Germans air their Thermarests daily. Glass and wood bathroom doors with lace curtains to preserve your modesty. Vacuum packing. Recharging batteries from sockets in the ceiling. No No No MistaBond! Dirt road diversions from dirt roads. Don’t go back to Calafate. De strapping the chimera. Drooling on my hat which I’d used as a pillow. Ruta 40 is out – too long, too bumpy, too expensive – no space on the buses anyways. Maybe if you were driving it yourself you could hammer out an interesting trip but when you’re on someone else’s timetable it becomes difficult. Bulky comfort. In icy Argentine they say now I’ve seen it all. Double tracked vocals. Meltwater from mountain streams to quench the thirst. Another town. Anti virus, bad skin, fascist Polskis. The origin of Dominic and Moira. Mechanical arms with oil in their veins. Got dirt, got air, got water and I know you can carry on. Measuring the passing of time by the battery charge monitor. Meeting previous acquaintances in the strangest of places. You’re an embarrassment. The sex lives of street dogs. The rights and wrongs of Internet reviews. Reverb. Echoey electronica in the desert. God hates techno – he doesn’t mind electronica. Beatific thoughts per minute. The slower the better. Conflict is futile. Conflict is an expensive path to resolution. It is divine my child and it only lasts a second. Black is black and bliss is bliss. Follow the yellow sticks, the red dots, the footprints of other bipeds. Beat your own path. The big steps, the vertical drop. Waking up tireder than you went to sleep in a strange smelling strange bed in granny patterned bed clothes. I’d like to marry all of my close friends live in a big house together by an angry sea. Gra-Syas. A Massawje?? Sound separation. Indigo Keogh. The Hilux is king. The economy of expression, supply and demand. Booked for the crooked, a torrent of thick. I hope we have the time of our lives.

Conflict Resoloution - Bending Your Zen

Vistas and Blistas

Provisions

We’re just back in from an experience of a lifetime. M keeps saying “If I had to go home tomorrow I’d be happy”. That’s generally a good sign that we’ve done something special. We successfully completed the 5 day trek in Parque National Torres del Paine in Chilean Patagonia known, because of the shape the route makes on a map, as “The W”. We did it 100% under our own steam, without a guide, laden with our tent, stove and 5 days worth of food. This is by no means an advanced trek but for us, two multi day trekking novices, it wasn’t easy either. It was a sort of challenge we set ourselves. If we didn’t make it all the way round it meant we’d bitten off more than we could chew. If we did there’d be a big victory dinner waiting for us when we got back. Food for us is the ultimate reward. It has always been a dream of M's to come to Chile - I don't think she dreamed she'd end up doing something as amazing as this when she eventually made it.

Novices

They say the weather in Patagonia is literally cloud by cloud, that if you don’t like the weather hang around for ten minutes. This proved to be very true and we experienced four seasons in an afternoon nevermind in a day. I kept humming the Crowded House song throughout the trek and it’s words have taken on increased significance since we’ve come back – typical of me to force the square peg of our experience into the round hole of someone else’s lyrics :

Four seasons in one day | Lying in the depths of your imagination | Worlds above and worlds below | The sun shines on the black clouds hanging over the domain | Even when you’re feeling warm | The temperature could drop away | Like four seasons in one day | Smiling as the shit comes down | You can tell a man from what he has to say | Everything gets turned around | And I will risk my neck again, again | You can take me where you will | Up the creek and through the mill | All the things you cant explain | Four seasons in one day | Blood dries up Like rain, like rain | Fills my cup | Like four seasons in one day | It doesn’t pay to make predictions | Sleeping on an unmade bed | Finding out wherever there is comfort there is pain | Only one step away | Like four seasons in one day

Mission Headquarters

Day 0: Gather up your boots and your oul’ tin cans…..Puerto Natales is a small town which is full of international backpackers and trekkers using it as a base to load up on gear and food before they head into the park. An Irish couple we met on the bus gave us a heads up about a free talk given daily by an American guy who owns a hostel down here (the excellent erratic rock hostel). It proved absolutely invaluable with information about weather, a suggested route, what clothes to pack, what food is good for what conditions and even where to pick it up. It really set us up and we spent the rest of the day running around buying food, socks, gas for the stove etc. Yet again M did a great job of packing our packs, sending me out on messages to get me out from underneath her feet. But by late that night we were ready.


Day1 : 22km round trip from Lake Pehoe up to Glaciar Grey. Bus from the hotel at 7:30 which would bring us the 120km from Puerto Natales to the park. The coach was packed with people from all over, young, old, hippies, gearheads with Gore-Tex sunglasses, independent women, the shy silent types. You could tell the novices (us) from the pros by the size of their packs. The art of trekking is less about fitness, the great outdoors and what sights you encounter on your walks and more about how compact you can get your pack. The bus driver was an insanio throwing the coach around hairpinned gravel roads like it was a rally car. I’ve never seen anyone so casually but confidently reckless with the lives of other people. We hadn’t envisioned being in fear for our lives quite so early on in the expedition. We caught our first sight of the towers, the mythical, jaw dropping Torres del Paine from the bus and you could feel the attention of the whole bus being gravitationally attracted to them. Amazing. We had decided to do the route counter clockwise which would mean we’d finish up by climbing to the Mirador del Torres for the best view of the towers. The first few days would be spent eyeing tantalising partial views of the towers from different parts of the trail without them fully revealing themselves.


We took a catamaran across Lake Pehoe, pitched our tent in the strongest gale, helped a girl from Limerick pitch hers and we took off up the trail, up the first leg of the W completely buzzed that we were actually doing something which we’d heard about and talked about for weeks before hand. Come whatever misery that may in the following days we’d gotten this far and were both well up for it. It was a 7 hour round trip with several lookouts on the way. We made it up through the valley, spotting mini blue clinic shampoo icebergs in the dettol lake along the way. We were totally knackered by the time we got up and couldn’t even relax at the top as we were being thrown around like rag dolls by the insane winds. The winds in Patagonia would officially tear the meat from Superquinn spare ribs. The trek down was never ending and we barely made it before dark. We started getting delirious after about 7 hours and had confusing thoughts like how close is your forehead? We kept seeing mirages of our tent aswell and when we eventually got back we were absolutely exhausted. We had completely over stretched ourselves but we were still delighted that we had completed Day1 successfully and were on schedule to complete the W in 5 days.

Rockin' The Glaciers

Day 2 : Lake Pehoe to Camping Italiano, 8km : We set out from Lake Pehoe walking like badly animated cartoon characters such was the extent of our leg muscle distress after yesterday’s marathon walking. It started out fine, we had a hot porridge breakfast and some hot coffee compliments of our stove, dismantled the tent and were on our way by about 9.

On The Trail

It started drizzling by about 10 and was proper raining by 11. We were told that if the wind was blowing hard the weather would change quite regularly. But if not, get used to whatever weather was around because it was going to be around for a while. And so it turned out. It was a miserable and very cold day. We got absolutely soaked through and more depressingly our packs were completely soaked aswell. We’d taken the precaution of double wrapping our sleeping bags in bin liners on the American’s advice and it proved to be very good advice indeed. We pitched our tent in the rain, threw all our wet gear into the tent, changed into our dry clothes and set up thermarest islands in the lake of our tent floor. A definite low point in the trip. The campsite had zero amenities, nowhere for wet trekkers to congregate to get warm, nowhere to set up your stove out of the wind to cook some hot food. We took to the bed for the wet afternoon and ate chocolate. Mura-cuckoo! We eventually surfaced for tea around 7 when the rain cleared temporarily and cooked ourselves some piping hot packet macaroni and cheese and some lovely hot coffee – the unlikely combination conspiring to warm our bones and soothe our souls after the stressful wet day.

Valle del Frances

Day 3 : Camping Italiano up Valle del Frances and back across to Los Cuernos, 11km, 7 hours. Another interesting piece of advice the American imparted – only pack 2 complete sets of clothes. A wet set and a dry set. Keep the dry set dry at all costs as you’ll need it to sleep in to keep warm. No matter how wet the other set gets, throw it on the next morning and the wind and your body heat will eventually dry it out saving you lugging around a lot of heavy wet clothes in your backpack. Sounds like great advice. In practice though, throwing soaking wet clothes on first thing on a frosty windy morning before a days hiking is a thoroughly unpleasant experience. Our nerves were indeed “at us” as we left the campsite the following morning to trek up Valle del Frances feeling like we’d just walked out of the lake.


A half an hour later and we were back on track though and enjoying some of the most intensely beautiful scenery we’ve ever seen. Glaciers, multiple mountain peaks, a sweeping steep valley, azure blue lakes, mini avalanches and waterfalls on mountain streams the only noises breaking the deep silence in the valley. Stunning. Instant justification for all the muscle trauma, blisters on blisters, mozzie bites, frostbite, sunburn through the ozone hole and weather issues. It snowed the softest snow in the sunshine and everything was ok with the world again. We floated down the valley, packed our tent and were on our way to Los Cuernos, the next overnight stop on our trek.

Chile is it?

The journey involved a long walk along the stony beach of the beautiful Lago Nordenskjold a surreal but welcome interlude in the generally rocky uphill or downhills we’d had up to then. At this stage we’d been well and truly bitten by the trekking / camping buzz. Getting to places where the day trekkers don’t gave you such a sense of guilty superiority. I think I’ve lost M to the great outdoors – she’s already talking about doing the legendary 3 day Fitzroy trek in El Chalten (back across the border into Argentina). It’s funny, when we arrived in Buenos Aires we met a couple of seasoned Irish trekkers who had travelled to Argentina and Chile specifically to do these walks and here we are lucky enough to be doing them because we’re in the neighbourhood. At Los Cuernos we bumped into Riva, an American Princeton architecture graduate working in Santiago teaching English who filled us full of interesting stories about Ivy League college life over a shared dinner of rice and smash with Paul an English guy doing the 9 day circuit (solo) who we met at the previous campsite. The freezing cold eventually put an end to our after dinner conversation and we retired to our sloped floored tent for the coldest night of our adventure yet. We also had several visits from mice who could smell our chocolate stash. So it was a night of very fitful sleep and jarring cold. The cold was a result of the unbelievably clear skies which had appeared earlier in the day and which we would be blessed with for the remainder of our trip. Frosty nights were a small price to pay for the stunning views the clear skies allowed us.

Worlds Above and Worlds Below

Day 4 : Los Cuernos to Chileno. 16.5km, 6.5 hours. This was going to be a tough one and we knew in advance that the last 2 hours of the trek were basically straight uphill followed by a descent to the campsite. The plan was to get as close to the base of the towers as possible in order to catch them as early as possible – ideally at dawn the following morning – in all their strange coloured glory. We got about two thirds the way along and I managed to knock out my knee. It’s interesting that at times of great stress on the body, all your old injuries decide to return and have an impromptu reunion. The weight of the backpack coupled with a few staggers over the rocks and the pretty heavy uphill going probably all conspired to knock the knee out. Strangely though, it was just the downhills that caused me problems – I was fine on the flat and when pushing uphill. So the last hour or so to Chileno, located deep in a river valley – all downhill – was pretty excruciating going. I wasn’t so much worried about getting to camp that night as whether or not I’d be able to do the climb to the towers in the morning. Then there was the small matter of the 6 hour descent to catch the bus out of the park. Stressful and depressing times. We set up camp, had dinner and I basically took it easy not even thinking about my knee, hoping that it would sort itself out with a bit of rest and some more macaroni and cheese.


Day 5 : Chileno to Mirador Los Torres and back down to Refugio Los Torres. 14km, 6 hours : We woke at about 6:30 after another very cold night. We caught the end of the sunrise from our campsite and it was pretty spectacular. It’s a common practice for people to get up at 4am – even earlier at the height of Summer - and hike 2 hours in the dark, over rocks to the Mirador, the lookout which gives you an incomparable view of the majestic towers. Given the state of my knee we had decided against that late the night before. After breakfast I strapped on my boots and warm gear half expecting to have to turn back 10 minutes into the trek up to the towers.
We left around 7:30, took it very handy and despite some niggles and jolts and Dinny Byrne impressions we made it up to Base Les Torres a campsite 2 hours up the hill and a 45 minute trek up the boulders from the Mirador. The boulders were a bit of a struggle given the fact that the trail basically disappears and you have to make your way up the mountainside over shale, rocks and boulders to the lookout. But we made it and it was so worth it. It was a spectacularly beautiful morning with the clearest blue sky you could ever hope for. We heard later that the previous day was the first day in over two weeks that you could actually see the towers as the weather had been pretty bad with a lot of rain and overhanging cloud. Needless to say we were absolutely blown away by the sight of the Torres in the early morning hyper bright light. We both couldn’t believe we (I) made it up and I think going to sleep the previous night that we’d pretty much silently resigned ourselves to an incomplete end to our 5 day adventure even if we didn’t admit it out loud. To get to the top together was an unbelievable feeling. Having done the previous 4 day’s slog and then to have the scare of a dodgy knee, coming over the rise to see the towers rise out of absolutely nowhere was an experience I think both of us will remember forever. Words genuinely cant explain our experience. Pictures might help but honestly it was one of the best feelings ever to have succeeded in seeing the towers. If all this seems overly self congratulatory we apologise but we’re genuinely proud of ourselves. We think it’s the start of something new.

Only One Step Away :



M gets Calor Kosangas Housewife of the Year. No question. She succeeded by mere intuition in keeping us well watered, dry and fed on the trail – not easy when you’re living out of a bag for 5 days in the wilderness. She also patiently waited for me every step of the descent, a descent which should have taken about 6 hours and probably took us close to 8 despite a donation of anti inflammatorys from some English girl we met on her way up. The camaraderie on the trail was unbelievable, people constantly offering to take a couple photo at a scenic spot, people stopping to check you’re OK when you’re fixing a blister, offers of food, dry clothes – the whole lot.

Day2

You learn a lot about yourself and each other when everything but the challenge is removed. We somehow managed to keep each other buoyant at all times, each one dragging the other along at different stages. We heard later – and this may be an urban myth – that last year a French rock climber was halfway through an ascent of one of the towers and he slipped and fell, hanging suspended from his climbing ropes in a particularly inaccessible crevice on the rock face. Apparently there he still hangs as a rescue is impossible due to the location of his suspended body. Scary stuff. Since then no climbers have been allowed onto the towers.


Yeah so after all the heavy stuff it was time for some fun :

Look Behind You!

Some Stretches To Relieve The Tension

Adrienne!!....

Returning Home

We returned to Puerto Natales to a delicious victory dinner followed by a sweet pizza dessert – a fresh sweet pizza base with ice cream, cream, grated apple and nuts. Bizarre but very very tasty.

The view from the jacuzzi

As a reward for our exertions and because of the money we saved over the 5 days in the park (I think we spent a total of 30 dollars the entire time we were in the park) we checked into the rather plush Indigo Patagonia Spa Hotel in Puerto Natales. This place is absolutely amazing and it’s rooftop spa overlooking the mountains we had just conquered was exactly what we needed to bring ourselves back to earth.

The view from our hotel room window to the National Park

Tomorrow we move back into Argentina to El Calafate and some more glaciers. Then it’s onto El Chalten to take a look at that 3 day trek around Mount Fitzroy. Happy happy times. We’ve hooked up with an interesting Danish guy, Jesper – also an architect, but an architect on a sabbatical - who we met at the base of the trail. He had impressively completed the 9 day circuit solo having not a huge amount of prior trekking experience. We’re heading to El Chalten with him to seek enlightenment and to suffer the path. It’s gonna be great crack altogether – so long as my knees hold out.

You Can Take Me Where You Will