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.