Glaciers-El Calafate

It has been a while since I have updated this, although I have made notes and drafts of this along the way. I thought it was high time that I added some photos to it and posted it on the blog. Sorry for the lateness.




We had made good progress so far down the Andes by bus, but we still had one more leg to do. We decided to get an overnight bus to Comodor rivadavia, spend the day there and get another overnight one to Rio Gallegos, and then the final 5 hours up to El Cafelate. A big trip but we planned it well......... with the usual outcome. It poured rain the first leg and when we got into Comodor it was a miserable day. Not only that but it was a national Labour Day holiday, so nothing was open. When I say nothing well, the bus station was and the service station. So we had to spend a day in this town, with rain squalls driving everybody inside, only for us there wasn't an inside. We walked down to the service station, Jo had a cup of coffee, I watched. That believe it or not killed two hours. Then we walked around town a bit and saw a sign in an internet cafe saying it was open at 2pm. Sweet, we had a plan, hole up for a while and then do some internet stuff. Then things got infinitely more brighter, we found a bakery that was also open. Considering how many people were in there, we were guessing that this really was the only place open. After filling ours pockets with a variety of pastries, we headed back to the dry bus station to eat and wait for the internet cafe to open.




The bus ride from the coast to El Calafate took us through some snow covered Fields, actually there was a lot more snow than when we went skiing in Bulgaria last Christmas. Jo was pretty excited about everything being covered in white. We checked into our hostel and went to see what there was to do. The views from our hostel were fantastic. You could see snow covered mountains from our bed. El Calafate was going to be our base to see the glaciers, so we booked two trips straight away, one for tomorrow and one for the day after that.




This was as close to a penguin Jo could get, she was most upset.




The first one took us on a luxury boat trip on a lake that is fed by about ten glaciers. The water colour is incredible, the colour comes from the minerals that are scraped up by the glacier as it heads down the hill. We were very lucky with the weather as well, crystal clear day and no wind.













The second trip that we were taking was going to take us up onto a glacier. Yep that's right we were going to strap some nails to our feet and walk on top of a 400 year old ice block, which just happens to be sliding down a hill at 2 meters every day. Walking on a glacier is a whole lot safer than you would think We clambered over this thing, which must have looked a bit funny. You see to get a good grip with the crampons ( nails on you shoes) you have to stamp your feet. So there was a line of about 15 people stamping away, walking in a snaking line for two hours. At the end of the walk, we came around a block of ice to see a table set up waiting for us, heaps of glasses and a couple of bottles of scotch waiting to be drunk. So we had a tot of 8 year old scotch with 400 year old ice cubes. Not a bad way to end a walk. The only other thing of note that happened on the walk was a bit of a wind sprang up for 10 minutes, which blew snow off the top of the mountains. This was the first time Jo had seen snow falling, she was most impressed. Then it cleared up again, in fact we had another belter of a day for the weather.





Now that's the way to drink scotch.



The last bit we had to see was the Perito Moreno glacier. The great thing about this part of the world is that you can get so close to the glaciers without any equipment. To see the same glacial chain from the Chilean side, you have to hike for days and it is a real extreme thing. On this side you just take a bus, they even have wheelchair access for some of it. One of the biggest highlights of the trip. This is an absolute must if you find yourself withing 3000km's of the place.

Bariloche

Bariloche finds itself in the lakes district of Argentina. Now when I think of lakes I think of salt pans as far as the eyes can see, when we talk about lakes here, they are glacial fed paradises. The town was also once Argentina's premiere ski resort as well. So in the summer you trek and in the winter ski, there are also about 500 chocolate shops on the main streets. What a place to park up for a couple of days to recoup from our bus trips. We took two excursions from the town, Jo had heard about another little town a couple of hours up the road with ' Argentina best handicraft market'. She actually convinced me to go. We headed down to the bus station for the 930am bus, unfortunately that was full and we could only get seats on the 11am. So we grabbed two seats of this one and actually booked our return trip for 5pm that night. It was then that Jo mentioned that El Bolson was the equivalent of Nimbin. Great, just what I wanted, to spend the day with the unwashed. The trip out there was fantastic, we sat right up the front of the bus and all I could think about was how good this road would be on a bike.

Jo sampling hanicrafts.

We got into El Bolson and headed straight for the craft market. We got to the other side and looked at each other and said, 'is that it'. There wasn't a lot of stores, probably about 150m of them. So we turned around to have a better look at everything, Jo was determined to sample the handicrafts of the region.
This carving is made from a tree that died and they didn't cut down. The roots still go into the ground. Yes she is eating something different in this one. Icecream I think.



The other trip we did from Bariloche, was a local bus trip out to the point to have a look at a hotel that has a great afternoon tea special going on. The hotel also has a good looking golf course and I was tempted to have a belt, I was starting to regret not belting the little white bugger around the park when I was in Aus a couple of months ago. It was a good afternoon, but we had to catch the 7pm bus south, so we headed back to town to grab our gear.


Hotel, this place is on its own little spit of land complete with golf course. We didn't stay here.

Argentina, eat steak or die

Our first meal in Argentina was of course steak, followed by a couple of bottles of red. Nice start, except it quickly became the norm. It was starting to get a bit hard to find anything but steak. Of course you can get different stuff, but for the same amount of money you get a steak meal twice as big, twice as nice and of course twice as yummy. On medical advice we switched to chicken and white for a few nights , but soon found ourselves dreaming of steak.

Jo tucking into a steak sandwich, I only had an omlette, but did manage to eat most of her chips.

We only had two goals for Argentina, and they were to see Patagonia namely the glaciers and the Iguazu falls on the Brazilian border, of course these are at opposite ends of a country over 5000km long. We decided on the far south first. So we hopped on an overnight bus for Mendoza. 3 nights there, eating and drinking and then back on another couple of buses for Bariloche.

Border Crossing Argentina

You hear all kinds of bad stories about border crossings, but the reality is that most of the time they are just that, stories. We heard about the Bolivia Argentine crossing, going this particular way, that someone had been waiting in the queue for two hours without moving one inch, the line had been getting longer and longer, everyone was being searched, everything out of your bag, the whole bit. I said to Jo that we would see what they were doing and if they started searching everything in every ones bag, that we should just head back to La Paz and fly into Argentina. I think she thought this a bit extreme, although she didn't actually voice anything. It all went very smoothly really, the officials, and there were 3 of them, were sitting there drinking Mate (Argentinian national drink, dried leaves out of a gourd) chatting away, with only one guy actually doing anything, he must have been high up to be the only one trusted to stamp the passport, type the info into the computer and to hand write the info into a book, as a backup maybe. Either that or he was a trainee and he was doing his border security test... or he was the main man and he had two new recruits.... this could go on for ever. And that is just what it felt like. I was starting to believe the stories and was certain that they would pounce on my bag and demand to see everything inside. I liked the other border crossings we had had, when all we had to do is show them our Aussie passports. They would grin at us, say kangaroo, laugh, stamp our passports and wave us out the door, much more pleasant I was even starting to worry about the amount of dust I had inhaled on the bus ride and whether or not to declare that I was carrying soil into a foreign country. I finally got my passport back, put it safely in my pocket, put on my backpack and went to meet Jo in Argentina. There was another guy standing off to the side, he also wanted to check passports. I mean really, he had just seen me stand at the counter for ten minutes, did he think that the guys at the counter would pass me through without the right stamps, not that I actually checked if I had the right stamps. I am suspecting that this guy was in fact the main man, because he just looked me in the eyes flipped open the passport ( upside down ) and handed it back without even seeming to look at it. Wow, he could read upside down from his peripheral vision, now we were talking the shit. This is the place.

I caught up with Jo and our new Norwegian Friend and we headed into town to catch another bus. Our Friend could speak enough Spanish to keep us out of trouble, we had two choices, feed ourselves or get on the next bus ( 6 hours ) in about 3 minutes....... take your time......... be we need to decide now...... the next bus after this one is in 3 hours. I voted for a feed, and it wouldn't make that much difference seeing as we were going to the same hostel and our Friend knew where she was going. The bus ride to Salta went without a hitch, great road compared with Bolivia and a great bus. Our new friend had been talking about how she had been waiting to get back to Argentina for a good steak meal, and talked us into heading out for dinner with her.

PS. I didn´t take any photo´s during the Crossing.

Tupiza

Its been a little while since I have updated here, so please a little patience.

Tupiza.

The train trip to Tupiza, and I do enjoy a good train trip, wasn't quite as good as I hoped. We got the expensive seats, not really expensive, its only a few dollars to get the best on offer. This included a meal in the dining/smoking car. It would have been nice if we could have grabbed our meals and headed back to our seats to eat. I sound like I am whinging a bit, don't get me wrong I had a smile from ear to ear the entire ride. The scenery and countryside were unlike anything I had ever seen before, ( with the exception of some parts of SA ) very dry and dusty.

Little Mining town on the way.

The whole area is mining, mostly tin I think and that is what we were riding, not a mine train, but the line. Plenty of llama or vicuna or something that resembles the little blighters, kept whizzing past our windows. It was quite funny, because Jo would get up, move to a better window for some photos and none would appear, as soon as she sat back down we would see more. Up she would get, a little bit more peeved each time. This kept me entertained for ages, but I was suitably angry at the buggers, well just enough to be convincing to Jo. Being a mine line in the middle of Bolivia, mmm lets just say they don't have any plans to put a bullet train on it in the near future and if they do, don't buy me a ticket as a surprise. Very bumpy, very dusty, but a great trip none the less, as I said I had a great time the whole way.

We got into Tupiza at 4am. No problem there we had phoned ahead to a hostel to let them know that we were coming and they were waiting for us, we just went straight to bed. We heard a couple of other guests talking about going for a horse ride that afternoon at breakfast, Jo gave me one of those quizzical looks. I just told her that she better tag along with them if she wanted, because it would be a cold day in hell before she got me on one of those mangy...........

Jo went for a 5 hour ride that afternoon, while I explored the town. Horses aren't really my bag, so to speak. In fact the closest I like to get to horses now days is when I eat a meat pie. The town however was quite a happening little place. Not very big, I had seen just about everything in two hours, but plenty of people everywhere and nice little stalls selling every kind of battery size you could want. The rest of our time here we just took it easy, it is a very wild west kind of place with dust blowing down the main street at dusk and tumbleweeds rolling in after the dust.

Jo´s horse ride, she had the camera that day.

We got a 4am bus to the border. I don't know why but everything seems to happen around this town at 4am. We met a nice Norwegian girl, who had been in Sth America for a while and was doing a loop trip up through Brazil and then down through Peru and Bolivia and back to Argentina, we caught her going back to Argentina. We hadn't booked anything in Salta, our next destination, and she suggested a place for us. She was staying there anyway as she had stayed there before and in fact it was a very nice little hostel, more like a house really. I wasn't sure who were guests ( paying ones ) workers, freeloaders or boyfriend/girlfriends of any of the above. Someone did put up their hand to take our cash though at checkout, so everything worked out ok in the end.

I get a little ahead of myself sometimes. For the bus from Tupiza we had to get up at 3.15am, Jo was ......... well not too happy about this, but at least she could have a sleep on the bus. We were about 50m down the road when we turned up a highway ( please read dirt goat trail ). The bus soon filled up with dust, which couldn't settle on anything for all the jarring, I was relived when we made it to the next town and I could check that all my fillings were still there. The ride did however give you the feeling of making a mad dash for the Bolivian border, being on the wrong side of the law, kind of thing. Not surprisingly, not too far from here, a short horse ride I was told, and I bet an even shorter motorbike ride, is where Butch and Sundance met their match. I half expected a coyote to appear from behind one of the cactus's. Not that I could actually see much through the dust and besides it was 4am. After about two hours we finally made it to tarmac. The dust cleared inside the bus and we could just see the sun coming up over the horizon. The one thing that I can't believe is that Jo managed to sleep on that trip, granted not the best sleep, but sleep she did.

Mining Sth Amearica style.

Don't trust the Bible 16 Apr

We, your two happy little travellers, find ourselves in a little town called Oruro. There is no train from La Paz to Tupiza. The line, left over from mining, starts in Oruro and heads south. That was the plan, catch a morning bus from La Paz to Oruro and then board the 15.30 train to Tupiza.
The Bible ( Lonely Planet guide ) was consulted, and a time and route were planned. We even bought our train tickets from La Paz office ( had we actually looked at them things might have been different ) and scouted the route to the bus terminal for the morning. So Monday morning rolled around, we checked out of Loki and headed off to the bus terminal. Jumped the 8am bus for the 3 hour trip to Oruro, which in fact took 4, it took us an hour to get out of La Paz.
Everything was looking great, have a spot of lunch at the best place we could find and then amble on down to the train station and wait. We got back to the train station at about 14.00, got a nice seat in the sun and waited for the other passengers to arrive.
No one did.... But that isn't a problem over here, because they were still letting people get on the 8 am bus at 830. Eventually at 15.00 we dragged out our train tickets to have a look at them. One number immediately struck us as odd. 17.
17th in fact. 17th, no that can't be right. We are going on Monday the 16th. The Bible said that the trains ran on Mondays and Fridays only. So I checked THE WATCH........ 16th it said. Ok so I mustn't have changed the date when we crossed the date line. Jo got out her phone........ Monday the 16th....... did she change hers?
Ok something is a bit funny here. We looked up on the big white poster size board where the train times are, Martes 15.30. Ok no problem there. .......
What does Martes actually mean? Right so you probably know more Spanish than us two, because you will have correctly worked out by now that Martes does in fact mean Tuesday. Another hint could be that Monday is Lunes, Monday, Moon-day, Lunes. I see no bloody connection. I mean its not rocket surgery, and neither Jo nor I are in fact and never will be rocket surgeons.

At the train station.

So ooppss. Out came the Bible, yep it says Monday and Friday trains only.
I'm not trying to point the finger anywhere here..... but it is all Jo's fault. Either that or the town planners got together and worked out a nifty way to get travellers to spend a bit of time in this town. I can just see them sitting around their council table, after having a siesta from 11am to 4pm. ' All those in favour of shifting the train time table one day say si' , the roof collapses from all the shouting and they all go home for the day knowing that they have done a good job ......
Ok so we were stuck in Oruro. No problem, we can make this work. There's not much to do here , yep kind of reminded me of Nazca. By the time we checked into the hostel had a bite to eat and beat Jo at some cards, about time too, I teach her a game and she flogs me for a month. It was time turn in.
We had a walk around town in the morning, but I wasn't sure if the town got going or stopped around this time, it was almost impossible to tell. Checkout was at noon, and after this we just went to the station to wait for our train....... again. This time we saw people gathering from about 1.30, so we felt like this would be the correct day.

Probably the most interesting thing I can say about Oruro, is that it is a palindrome.

Jungle Trip 8th to 12th Apr

Chalalan, is an ecotourism lodge in the middle of a rain forest. Two people on our Inca trail had been there and recommended it to us. The story of the place is quite long, but well worth it.
Sometime in the early 80's, four people were rafting down the Tuichi river in Bolivia. Their raft turned over and one of the people ( I don't know what happened to the others ) found himself lost in the jungle. He was in there for 18 days before a hunter from a remote community found him and took him to his village. They half fixed him up and then took him on a three day trip down river to Rurrenabarque, a small town on the Beni river. On the way they stopped at a traditional staging point for the villagers, Chalalan. This is a small lake that is spring fed, so is independent of the rivers and has clean water pumped into it constantly, there is one outlet which eventually reaches the river. This created a haven for wildlife and to the villages a great food source when travelling to Rurre. They stopped there for a couple of days , and while there the idea of a tourist camp took hold. I'll cut the story a bit short here. They got finance ( 1.5 mil) but only if they got help in setting everything up. The Bolivian gov stepped in and said that a foreigner wasn't going to own any part of it. It was eventually settles that the local community would have ownership.
This is where we roughed it.


It took them five years to build two buildings,m and when the agencies wanted more money to help the locals, the locals had a meeting and basically told them to stick it. So they finished the project on their own. They needed to get final inspections, but basically they finished they remaining 10 buildings in 6 months where it took 5 years to build two. Every single one of the 80 families in the community helped in this, and they were rewarded with part ownership. The breakdown is this, 50% own by the community ( now 120 families ), 49 % owned by the 80 families that built the place and 1 % owned by the church..... just because.
It is quite a small operation still, but needs to be, otherwise the animals would leave. That is the whole point of this place, to keep it forever if possible. So much pressure was put on the Bolivian gov that they created a national park around the place. You do get the feeling that they are passionate about the place, when they tell you that you must shower any insect repellent and sunscreen off before you go for a swim in the lake, so that it is not polluted. Now even the local don't hunt here, so i suppose that eventually the number of wildlife will increase.
The other very important thing they do out here, is to NOT interfere with the animals. The don't touch the at all, just observe. Some places catch anaconda and other animals, but they are getting harder to find for this exact reason, at Chalalan it will get easier. Unfortunately there are no anaconda here, and never has been but there are plenty of other animals to see.

8th apr. Our flight was leaving at 4.30pm. We got a call qt 11.30 asking us if we could be down there early due to bad weather in Rurrenabarque, could we be there at 12 for a 1pm flight. We had packed all our gear so this was no problem. Check in was good, and we got on the plane ready to leave at 1.15. Took off and then circled La Paz before landing again. The weather had closed in around Rurre, and we weren't going anywhere. We were told that the flight had been canned and to come back tomorrow. mmmmm great.
We rang the America Tours office and they said they would get back to us. So we went back into La Paz. Our bed had been given away,. so we went to another place where we had stayed. He was full as well, all he had was a room with one single bed in it and no key for the lock on the door. That was ok because we didn't get any sleep that night so why would you need to lock the door. America tours, did get back to us and said ' No problem we just shift the whole tour one day '.
Mountains just outside of La Paz.

9th. We went back to the airport, our flight was the 2pm one this time. Everything was great we got on the plane, went down the runway, and then suddenly powered down. At least yesterday we got airborne. They assured us that it was a minor problem and they would try to fix it as soon as they could. They were as good as their word on this and we finally took off for our 40 min flight at 4.30. It might only be 40 min by plane, but it is a 16 hour bus trip, and apparently not reliable ...... ?

A Chalalan rep met us at the airport, took us to the offices and made sure we settled into our hotel for the night. We had to be at the river for a 730 start the next morning, but don't worry I will come and get you.

10th. The boat trip was to take us 1.5 hour up the Beni river, the another 5 up the Tuichi. The wet had just finished so the river was flowing fast.


Skinny boat, 6.5 hours... brrrrrr.


I wasn't too keen on the boat, it was very long and very skinny, I suppose it needed to be this way because of the flow. We stopped at about 11 for a snack and a loo break, there weren't any actual loo's, so some of the group said they would wait, but you get the idea. There were 5 of us, one American and another two Australians. We got there at about 2pm, had lunch and a talk about the place and then took off on our first walk. Jo and I had our own guide and the other three had another. We walked around the edge of the lake, heard a tree fall through the forest, which we had to later walk around. The mossies were thick and the tree had stirred up loads of ants. A canoe had been taken to the edge of the lake for our return trip, we were covered in bite already and we'd only been there five minutes. On the way back in the canoe we saw a group of yellow squirrel monkeys coming down for their afternoon drink. We just floated on the lake watching them. We also saw some brown capuchino monkeys as well.


Yellow Squirrel Monkey.

Dinner was very good, in fact the food overall was good I thought, and then we were all heading out on the lake to look for caimans. Yep they said it was safe to swim during the day, but not to swim at night. the way you spot caymans is to hold your torch at eye level and pan around, their eyes glow back at you. The girl in the boat in front of me, Lisa one of the Australians, said she couldn't see anything. I gave her my torch, told her how to look....... gosh ... she said and threw the torch back at me. The whole lake was alive with eyes. They were all babies, but they were still there. We were looking for the big one, a 4m to 5 m beast. One of the guides stood up in the canoe and started making baby distress calls. Splash, we had found the big one. The eyes were huge, but it didn't do anything but watch us. Me being so brave, blacked out at this point, we just drifted in close to the caiman. I wasn't exactly in my comfort zone. I am here writing this so everything worked out fine.
That was it for day 1, we headed to camp and to bed. The facilities here are incredible, when you consider how remote you are. It was easy to forget that you are in the animals home and not your own. The cayman had certainly brought this fact home to me.

11th. A heavy trek was waiting for Jo and I after breakfast. We were to cross the lake and then take a trail that crossed two small rivers, before heading back to the lodge. We hadn't walked more than 50m before we were soaked through with sweat. The reason for crossing the rivers was that this was where the black howler monkeys lived. Apparently you don't get to see them very often. We could here them in the distance and managed to get in front of them. Only because of the guide were we able to sit under the trees and watch the whole group pass over us as the fed. They did spot us and change course, but we were no threat and the one that stayed behind to keep an eye on us didn't seem too bothered about us and then raced off to catch the group. On the way back Sergio ask if we wanted to try Piranha fishing.

Piranha fishing.


We said sure ... where.... He said here, in the river we just crossed. The river we just crossed... oh my god. We didn't end up catching any, so I think this was a good thing, and we hot footed it back to camp for lunch and a siesta.
We had another canoe ride in the afternoon, and saw more birds and monkeys. This was much to our liking, we had deck chairs set up in the canoe and were paddled leisurely around the lake, in the shade.
We had a night walk after dinner, back down to where the large caiman lives. It was out in the water, but it was much better seeing it from the land than the water. Jo freaked out at the taranchula nest, so I didn't get to see them. That was ok because there is another nest in camp that you can see, the hairy little buggers, well they're not that little. We had a party, thanking us for coming, much drinking and dancing and went to bed about midnight.

Not a bad way to travel, we certainly did it tough in the jungle.

12th. The boat rip back only take 2.5 hours but we did get to see some cappiburras on the way. We had a 1pm flight back to La Paz. We had the option of a 5pm one but I thought it would be best to get out of there while we could. Lisa and Andrea were supposed to come back last night, they are staying at the same hostel as us and were on the5 pm flight, they didn't turn up?

If I could do it again I would spend a bit more time at the lodge, say another day or two. We weren't told we could stay longer by the tour group booking us and had already booked flights, and I would spend a day in Rurrenabarque, there are more things to do than we had time. 1 full week should be enough.