Archive for November, 2009
Like Defrosting the Freezer, Only Grander
Posted by Delaney in Argentina, El Calafate on November 28th, 2009
The virus on my laptop has mutated into a strange beast. The young Albanian that programmed it was kind enough to incorporate in a friendly message that pops up every 10 seconds and bounces happily around the screen saying “This Computer is Being Attaked” (sic). And there’s a picture of a fairy wand, which is nice. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it makes doing anything on the computer absolutely impossible. So, my apologies for the intermittant photo uploads. It’s the Albanian’s fault.
Perito Moreno was nice, but I just have to speak the truth a little bit here: it wasn’t that great. I’d been hearing about it for 3 and a half months now, mostly surrounded by superlatives and hyperbole. Usually, I would think that nothing could live up to hype like that, but my experience in Iguazu made me think that maybe yes, it really will be that stupendously life-changingly out-of this world.
Don’t get me wrong, it was really cool. And we had outstanding weather. But it’s kind of like looking at a big, blue, snowy cliff for 6 hours. Every once in a while a car-sized chunk of the big snowy cliff falls into the water and eveybody cheers, and there’s comraderie and everything, but the park is really developed, almost Disney-esque. They’ve erected metal sidewalks where trails used to be, and the massive flow of foreign tourists has made the Argentines become really organized and funnel all of us into specific zones to see the glacier. It was kind of like watching a really big movie about a glacier, with lots of noisily chewing Italian and French people in the audience.
A giant, unflavored Slurpee:
An untitled short film about my experience:
I opted to dole out some serious pesos for “MiniTrekking,” which allows you to take a catamaran embarque to the other side of the glacier, where you get out and follow a guide up onto the glacier, wearing crampons to stay upright. It was fine, and a cool experience, but we were in a single-file line like school kids the whole way, going very slowly and stopping about every 45 seconds for the middle-aged Germans to catch up. In 3 hours, I bet we walked one kilometer. It felt like we were moving at a you-know-what’s pace. But there was Scotch at the end, a highlight.
MiniTrekking:
Scotch at the End:
So, in a word, Perito Moreno: meh. Un-hype-live-up-able.
Serendipity
Posted by Delaney in Argentina, El Chalten on November 25th, 2009
I didn’t realize that places like this still existed. El Chalten was a town built in 1985 to beat Chile to a land grab. I knew this before I came, but expected a 30-year-old town to be fairly well established, not a frontier outpost. There are maybe 100 buildings in total, including local residences, two smallish supermercados, a few souvenir shops, some restaurants, and about 50 hostels/hotels. Wooden sidewalks and seriously grizzled dogs line the streets. The draw of El Chalten is not the town, however. It’s the absolutely gorgeous, blindingly amazing wilderness surrounding it.
I honestly feel that all my misery in the rain up North (in Bariloche and sopping-wet Chile) was made up for by the two incredible days that I stumbled across here. I arrived at 10:30 on Sunday night after a pretty long, pretty bumpy bus ride (see Ruta Nacional 40) during which I saw a whole lot of nothing, mostly empty sage-filled high desert. That is until the last 20 minutes or so when we were able to catch a twilight glimpse of both Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre from the road. I ate an excited meal that night with soft-spoken Italian Pietro from the bus and joined him the next cloudless, 60 degree (F) morning for the hike up to Fitz Roy. Pietro would only join me for half the hike, and I would continue on to the highest point accessible without climbing gear.
Thus, dear readers, I discovered Patagonia.
I don’t know quite what to say about this ridiculous mountain, how to do it justice. In Bariloche I often found myself appreciating the surrounding beauty, but sometimes felt that it was very like what we have back home, albeit on a grander scale. Fitz Roy (and later Cerro Torre) were, well, not of this earth. They’re so high, alpine but more jagged, like cathedral spires 50, no 100 cathedrals tall. On top of a mountain, surrounded by enormous creaking glaciers, with perfect crayon-blue lakes below, full of tiny floating (actually huge) icebergs, surrounded by postcard vistas, perfectly complemented by a cloudless, sun-filled sky. I took photos and knew before the shutter closed that no photo I nor anyone ever took would do it justice. I’m almost glad that I didn’t have a big fancy camera, as I would have been frustrated to find that really, it’s just not the same.
Just not the same:
I walked across a frozen lake (Lago de Los Tres) to get closer to the base of Fitz Roy. I noticed that the priests and nuns climbing the steeples had crossed it earlier, and found myself the only one of the four dozen tourists on the hike that made it to that point. It was a good moment, alone with the cold and the high and the sun and the unfathomably big rock looming in front, looking close enough to touch.
And so, I ate a bun and worked my way down, only getting lost once for about 20 minutes.
The next day, sore and tired, I once again accompanied Pietro on a hike that he would complete only half of, the hike to Laguna Torres, at the base of Cerro Torre. I opted to camp in a nearby bosque that I saw on Pietro’s map, so the going was a bit slower with a slightly fuller bag. But the walk was short, and again, worth every second of Chilean Rain Depression. I had a majestic campsite, an amazing view of these behemoth mountains and glaciers and icebergs. I took about a thousand photos of Cerro Torre because everytime I looked up, it got more and more beautiful, as the setting sun began to light it from the side and then the bottom as the evening progressed. At twilight I was walking back to my charming camp site in the woods, singing a little song to myself and jumping from boulder to boulder along the edge of the cloudy white-blue river (because, folks, it was a glacier like five minutes ago), when I missed a rock and fell in. It was pretty cold, but not cold enough to harsh my mellow, as I’d begun to realize how lucky I was to be there on the edge of an amazing, surreal, otherworldly place. I camped, and slept (and froze), and hiked down the next morning to find El Chalten in the throes of a howler of a windstorm.
Cerro Torre:
My camp at Padre D’Agostini:
My hostel in El Chalten:
I had two days of beautiful, completely clear and warm weather, unplanned by me, in a place that people will hang out in for weeks waiting for just a glimpse of a cloudless peak. Climbers will literally wait months for days like I had; the guides that take people up the trail every day of the season all had their cameras out, taking photos of the peaks to show their comrades what a cloudless mountain day looks like. Seren-Ephron-dipity.
I’m headed to Calafate tomorrow to get my mind warped by Perito Moreno. And for that, I give thanks.
Ruta 40
Posted by Delaney in Argentina, El Chalten on November 21st, 2009
Have you seen the movie The Motorcycle Diaries? Because it’s pretty much the story of my life right now. I’m traveling South on Route 40, paralleling the Andes in the foothills much like Che Guevara, but instead of a puny motorcycle I’m in a King-of-the-Road motorcoach. I didn’t really know anything about this road (not a highway, by any means) before I hopped on the bus, but the fellow at Hostel Inn told me that it’s the best, most comfortable way to get down to Chalten and El Calafate, hands down. As I don’t really know anything about anything, I had to take his word for it. And so far, it’s pretty adventure-y. I also needed to read up on El Chalten, so one of the first things I did on my soon-to-be two day bus ride South was to look it up in Lonely Planet. Lots of hikes (Fitz Roy, maybe?), other cool stuff to do there, but what really caught my eye was the two-page spread entitled Surviving Ruta Nacional 40.
It’s a dangerous road, apparently. Not because it’s twisty or mountain-y or anything, just because it’s in the middle of the absolute middle of nothing. It’s a long, straight gravel road that passes through 4000 kilometros of flat. The book says stuff like “Bring two full-size spare tires. Bring extra fuel in a separate tank, as stones will puncture your fuel tank. Buy a windshield protector. Cover your headlights with industrial-strength clear tape.” And always, always stop to help somebody stopped on the side of the road. Our bus, like most others, has what looks like multiple gunshot wounds all over its body from taking this road every week.
More from Lonely Planet:
…rutted Route 40 is every bit a no-man’s-land. It parallels the backbone of the Andes, where nandus doodle through sagebrush, trucks kick up whirling dust and gas stations rise up like oases. It is the ultimate road trip.
Every car or truck or bus we pass flashes its headlights and waves wildly to our driver (who reciprocates, of course) as if to say, “we’re in this together, buddy,” and one time on a particularly narrow portion of road, we actually stopped so our driver could shake another’s hand, just out of solidarity.
I’ve also seen lots of nandues, quite a few guanicos (unfortunately some dead, caught in the ubiquitous barbed wire), a few lonely gauchos far off on the horizon, and a hundred million sagebrush plants. But it’s really really sunny, without a cloud in the sky. I can’t complain.
Edit, four hours later: I’m not sure what the alternate would be, as the nice fellow at Hostel Inn told me that this is the comfortable way to travel down to Chalten. I was expecting a Via Bariloche-type level of service, as I paid out the nose for this ride, but it’s more like a long city bus ride. Hostel Guy also told me that they’d serve some food, but I’ve had to rely on my (thankfully large) cookie stash to get through the day. It’s ok, I like cookies. And now I’m at a very strange place, the Hotel Belgrano in Perito Moreno, which is a granny-type hotel with dorm rooms and a little diner, where I will be eating some papas fritas in a few short minutes. Wish me luck.
Hotel Belgrano:
Some Ruta 40 Stops:
I’ll let you know how the rest of the ride down goes, hopefully we see an Ande or two before El Chalten.
Edit, day two: More guanicos, more sheep. A lot more gravel and cookies. We’re stopping in little hamlets of no more than a few houses each, and they’re absolutely dependent on buses like ours stopping to use the banos and buying empanadas for lunch. Once they finish paving the entire stretch of Ruta 40 (which may, in fact, take decades), I have a feeling these little outposts may disappear.
A stop right before El Chalten, just to take a photo:
The photo:
Bariloche 3
I left Chile. When I walked to the (previously mentioned) trailhead in the rain, the little Chileno actually told me that Chilean national parks are closed to camping until the first of December, because the extended rain sometimes causes trails to get washed out, stranding backpackers. So I knocked on the car window of the only other goofball silly enough to go hiking in the lluvia and asked him for a ride back to Lenca. He turned out to be a nice enough guy, a British expat living in Puerto Montt with his Chilean bride and daughter. He seemed a bit dodgy about discussing his life there in Chile, but when we started talking about hikes in the area, he really opened up and described a dozen or more beautiful nearby hikes (or “walks” as he called them) on volcanoes or to mountain lakes or incredible vistas, but after each one, said something like, “but you won’t be able to do it now, it’ll be covered with snow,” or “too bad right now the rain clouds will make it impossible to view.” So I decided to take a bus as quickly as I could back to Argentina and, hopefully, the sun.
I got to Bariloche (the third time) the next day and checked into the Hostel Inn, a nice place right down the street from Pudu Hostel and Marcopolo. It has a great view and an English-speaking reception, which is nice for those of us who are lazy. And then I went to talk to my hairy malcontent pal at Club Andino. I was all high hopes and expectations as I walked in the office, as the sun was shining a bit (it was only ‘mostly cloudy’!), and I knew that there were many hikes that I’d missed during my two other stints in town. Remember how I wrote that the fellow looked me up and down and told me to go to Refugio Frey the last time I was there? Well, it turns out that he told me that not because I look amateurish or anything (because I don’t, my bright red gaiters make me look like a pro), but because it was the only refugio hikable that early in the year. He told me that they won’t let people go up to the other places without a guide, which cost around AR$2800. So. Guess where I went? Refugio Frey again! I managed to find another campground down on the edge of Lago Gutierrez, which seemed to be connected somehow to the Refugio Frey hike, and so I filled out a little paperwork, asked the grumpy beard about a bus, and went to buy some cookies and pasta.
The plan to get to the trailhead was relatively straightforward. I bought a Via Bariloche ticket for a distance of about 25K to a point on a map near the South end of Lago Gutierrez (which only cost two pesos), put most of my heavy stuff into a locker at the hostel, went back to the bus station, got on the bus, pointed at my 30 peso trail map to the place I needed to go, and responded with a “Si, señor” to el conductor’s rapid and lengthy response. No problem, right? I chatted with an elderly man on the short ride for a while, discussing his life and El Bolson* until we came to the end of Lago Gutierrez. And passed it. My only recourse at this point was to make my way up to the front of the bus and say, “Señor, camping es cerca, no?” to which he replied with a lengthy string of words in a language that I really don’t understand at all sometimes. But a short time later he seemed pleased to tell me that “Si, camping. Aqui.” and I got out.
And was immediately lost. I realized after about an hour of wandering around on cow trails and getting stuck in thorny thickets that he’d left me at the North end of another, nearby lake, not the South end of Lago Gutierrez.
So I walked on the highway for a few kilometros (and crossed the continental divide!) to find the entrance to Los Baqueneros, a huge, posh and completely, desperately empty campground staffed by Ignacio and his very pregnant wife, a couple of mean-looking gauchos, and a whole mess of beef cattle. It was comfortable, and expensive (AR$25! For camping!), and I left the next morning to make my way up to Refugio Frey.
My camp at Los Baqueneros:
Los Baqueneros is situated at the South end of Lago Gutierrez, and next to it, in the Southwest corner of the lake, are a string of private estancias. The lake is evidently public, but the land is private, so these landowners build their barbed wire fences right up to the waterline, which meant that to get to my trailhead, I needed to walk in the lake. This was fine until I came to a stream that worked its way through an estancia and came out under the fence to flow into the lake. The motion of the water carved out a chunk of the lake bed, making the water there about thigh level at its deepest. I crossed it, cursed the selfishness of these rich landowners, and hiked the rest of the way up the mountain with soggy boots.
It was of course fun up at Refugio Frey. I said hi to Alan and played Uno with a crazy Brazilian/Chilean/Italian named G’e who came up to the refugio “to drink wine,” which he did in spades. I decided to camp out for an adventure (and to save some pesos), and was warm enough, but the wind whipping over the mountain range kept me awake for a while, and I woke up covered with a thin layer of snow inside my tent.
My camp at Refugio Frey (II):
Entonces, I came back to the hostel, booked a trip to El Chalten for two days later, and did some laundry.
I decided to try another refugio hike the next day against the counsel of Beardy at Club Andino, and it was very pretty, and pretty steep, but a totally different experience than an overnight hike. I felt about 40 pounds lighter (which I was, without a big pack), and had a lot of fun tramping around in the snow at the top. It wasn’t dangerous at all, and took me as long to go to the top and back as the map said it took to go one way, so I’m glad I didn’t heed the grumpy man’s advice. And a very kind man who was collecting tree trimming debris from the side of the road gave me a ride back to a bus stop outside Bariloche, and when he realized that I couldn’t understand him that well, he compensated by speaking VERY LOUDLY. So that was fun.
Refugio Lopez:
*He moved to El Bolson 35 years ago and stayed for 6 years before heading back to Buenos Aires, which makes me think that he, like many others who moved to El Bolson in the 70’s, was fleeing persecution from the military dictatorship. And he said that he had a son still living there, so he may have moved all those years ago, and given up his lifestyle in Buenos Aires for the sake of his son’s safety. At least that’s what I’m going to think.
Halfway Home Phone Fiction
Posted by Delaney in Chile, Puerto Varas on November 16th, 2009
A couple of days ago I took a local minibus from Puerto Varas to a stop in the middle of nowhere (actually by a pueblo called Lenca), which allowed me to hike 5K in the rain to a trailhead in Parque Nacional Alerce Andino. I came to the little cabana marking the start of the trail and met a tiny Chileno who began speaking rapidly to me in (what I think was) Spanish. I understood absolutely nothing (other than one or two words about peligro and/or prohibido) and no matter what I said or tried to pantomime about my slowness or lack of understanding or stupidity, he continued to speak a torrent of Chilean Spanish. I rudely left him talking quickly (and now loudly) to my back at the trailhead and started up the muddy trail on my own, and cursed the Chilean weather for a solid hour and a half while trudging through the mud until I came across what looked like a very wet guanico on the uphill side of the trail. It seemed not to be afraid of me, and people, these things are beautiful, like a llama’s foxy sister, so I was pretty excited to see one up close, and so tame. That is, until it also started in with the rapid Chilean Spanish. My understanding of Espanol was getting a little better in Argentina, and I could entiendo quite a bit near the end of my stay there, but Chilean Spanish is a guanico of a different color, so to speak, and I’ve had quite a bit more trouble getting by here. So I was confused.
At this point, I was already soaked from the hike to the trailhead and a bit grumpy about the whole sogginess of the last couple weeks (and frustrated that I couldn’t understand the tiny Chilean nor the guanico), so I decided to make camp for the night right there, in a clearing a few metros uphill from where he now stood, calmly appraising me.
I cooked a satisfying meal of, of course, lentecas and arroz (with a bit of salted palta for texture), set up my champ of a waterproof tent and tried to go to bed early, but the big-eyed fellow outside refused to callate (a lot like the little guy at the trailhead cabana), no matter how much I attempted to “lo siento, senor, no entiendo” him. After a couple (few?) hours of this, I unzipped the tent, climbed out, and found myself in a place that looked a bit different than it did in the daylight. The sky had cleared and was full of flashlight stars; the horizon had expanded, the trees lowered or cut, and the bedrock under all that damp brown soil had been exposed. My tent was now on a broad expanse of volcanic rock, and I remember being surprised that I didn’t feel the change from inside the tent, although my sleeping pad is very plush and would have cushioned any movement below.
My furry pal outside was now dry and seemed to be in a better mood. His once rapid Espanol was now a bit more mellow, and I was able to understand a few words now and then. I picked out “la noche,” “amable,” and what sounded like “fantastico,” although I’m not positive that’s a word in Spanish, Chilean or no.
A path led off through the rock perpendicularly from the main trail that I hadn’t noticed the day before, and was lit low to the ground by phosphorescent hongos, each plant (fungi?) glowing a subtly different pastel color. After a quarter hour or so of basking in the starlight and listening to the low chatter of my friend, I watched him move off down the path to the left (unfortunately uphill) and decided as I probably wasn’t going to sleep any time soon, I might as well follow. Also, my new rain jacket hadn’t proven watertight the day before, and I hoped that a stroll in the balmy night air might dry it (and me) off a bit.
Entonces, after an easygoing 20 minute (or so) walk up the rocky face of a treeless Andean Sierra under the cover of a million sparkling points, my pretty-eyed guide and I arrived at another, smaller cabana, this one in a bit better shape than the Chilenito’s, with lace curtains in the windows and “Wilkommen” carved into the woodwork above the door. I was a bit suprised to find something like this, as most of the Deutsch-type architecture had been, up to this point, in the German-colonized village of Puerto Varas, now quite a few kilometros below us.
I followed my easygoing guanico inside & found a few friendly faces gathered around a television attached to a portable DVD player. The matronly, apron-clad woman from my short stay at the hospedaje in Puerto Montt, Mirta and Colombian Pedro (with perfect Spanish) from Ancud, the winking schoolgirls from Chonchi, and most confusingly, Buby, our guide to Refugio Frey. They were rewatching, of course, the Argentine National team playing Peru in the torrential downpour during my stay in Recoleta. Buby kindly said que tal, although I could tell that he, like the rest of the cozy little room, was busy waiting for the catalytic moment near the end of the game when Martin Palermo scored the ultimate, winning goal. I found myself, as I often do while watching futbol, a bit aburrido, but decided to stay awhile and see if I could follow the game, at least until the final goal, as I’d missed it live the first time and wanted to be a part of the experience with these people I’d met and had difficulty communicating with over the last couple of weeks. A clear night outside, a warm glow from the (tiny) TV inside, a torrential downpour on the television through which we can barely see the futbolers. And my tent and all I own on the continent forgotten below.
Palermo scores, the streets of Buenos Aires erupt, the Argentines and Chilenos pound the tables. We drink, we fly, we drown, and Buby saves our lives over and over again. My Spanish is perfect; I’m comfortable everywhere I find myself. I have a baby, I buy a house, I cherish my friends and family. I read, I write, I work hard, I enjoy my life. Things work out in the end, in the little cabana in the bosque in the parque.
Even though all it does is rain.
Truly Yours, Delaney.
Personality Goes a Long Way
Ancud is, well, exactly what you might think a fishing village at the bottom of the world would be. It’s cold, and wet, and the people here work hard and live in wood-shingled small homes heated by wood stoves, almost without exception. The houses are painted bright colors and have heavy duty shutters and corrugated steel roofs (and sometimes siding). I’m holding out for the penguin colonies tomorrow, but my new residencia hostess Mirta thinks that there won’t be enough gringos to take the tour, in which case I think I’ll move on down Chiloe instead of touring the numerous churches found throughout the islands (a popular thing to do, I’m told).
Hospedaje Austral:
Lonely Planet, my only source of information about Ancud, told me that the Hospedaje Austral is “right next” to the bus station, and for that reason I decided to stay there. I asked the grumpy tourist information office worker about it, and she called them & arranged a pickup (a bus pickup, oddly) without telling me anything about the place. It turns out that this is one of those reasons a two-year-old guidebook can be a bit of a liability sometimes. They’ve built another bus terminal in Ancud, surrounded by thousands of beautiful, charming Hospedajes and hostels, and Hospedaje Austral is now across town, right next to the old bus station, now unused. And the lack of business is sadly really showing. The big “Viende” cartele out front is kind of a bad sign, too. Mirta, of course, is very nice, and the inside of the place is cute in a wood-paneling kind of way, but her husband seemed a bit mad at the bus company (cruz del sur) for building a new terminal across town. However, as they say, character personality goes a long way. And I worked very hard on my Spanish. For hours.
Wish me luck with the penguinos tomorrow. For some reason, I thought they were called tuxedos in Espanol. I said as much to the grumpy tourist information officer, and she looked at me like I called an emu a sport jacket.
Hasta.
Edit 111109: No penguinos. Mirta said that not enough gringitos showed up to form an expedition, so I toured a bunch of Chiloe and saw a whole lot of small, steel-clad fishing villages. It was wet, and cold, but the sun came out at the end of my day and I was a bit proud of the fact that I only saw one or two other blancos during my 9 hours of travel on the municipal buses. And nadie speaks ingles down here. Loco.
Also, more complaining: you know what beats a long cold night in an empty hospedaje? A short cold shower in an empty hospedaje. Blerg.
Blue River, Ska Night, It’s Chile
Originally published at travelswithdelaney.com.
El Bolson got better. The day after I wrote that last, grumpy post, Alon and I headed off to hike a trail to Refugio Cajon Del Azul. At the bus stop to the trailhead we met a very nice couple of young Israelis named Erez and Michal who accompanied us on our trek. It turned into a beautiful day and a magnificent hike to another cozy and welcoming cabin in the middle of absolute nowhere. Unlike Refugio Frey, however, there was no snow at the top, just horses and chickens and goats and an apple orchard and a vegetable garden and a few very angry sheep. And a really nice little family made up of a middle aged couple, their daughter and her husband, and their baby, Tomas, who would not stop laughing and smiling and looking cute the whole time we were there.
Alon, Yours Truly, Horse:
We went to bed early and satisfied, woke up to another beautiful day, ate a nutritious breakfast of dulce de leche and simple carbs and trekked back down the mountain, stopping at the exact same breathtakingly beautiful spot to lunch that we had the day before. We had also crossed two decrepit, ridiculous, handmade bridges the day before, and I was very excited to cross them again. There was just enough danger in crossing these relics to make it exciting and a tiny bit dangerous, and it was probably the highlight of the hike, at least for me. I felt a little Indiana Jones-y.
So fun, a tad dangerous:
We needed to hitch a ride back to town, and Michal (who happened to be a winsome young lady) and her boyfriend Erez nabbed a ride within half an hour. Alon and I fared a tad worse. I don’t think that it had anything to do with our looks, however, as we saw a grand total of 3 cars in 2.5 hours of waiting, and managed to grab the 3rd one.
Pitiful:
So we made it back to town and beat it over to Refugio Patagonico (our first choice of hostels upon arriving in El Bolson, remember?). And yes, it was as magical as we’d hoped. Really cool hosts, really cool fellow travelers, great food, fantastic building and beds and surroundings. About as far removed from our first El Bolson hostel experience as possible. And Ariel, one of our hosts, took us to a reggae/ska show at the bar in town that stays open late and we ended up dancing our tuchuses off until the sun came up. Which was fun.
El Bolson, Better Weather:
Then I caught a bus back to Bariloche, where I slept the whole day and refused to interact with the entire English speaking population of Hostel Pudu. I also had to wake up the next day at 6:00 to catch a bus to Chile.
The Chilean Border, Ska Band Sighting:
And now I’m In Puerto Montt, which recently retook the title of coldest, wettest place on earth, according to the book of records that I’m currently writing. I’m starting to think that I may have chosen a bad time to go camping in Patagonia. I keep hearing that it’s unseasonably cold here, but this unseasonable weather is likely to stick around for all of November. What gives?
Yours Truly.
The Silly, Foolish
Originally published at travelswithdelaney.com.
El Bolson: The Fool.
Is very cold, and very rainy, and very not fantastic. I had such high hopes for the city, having heard indirectly from Uncle Kevin’s friend that it was a very cool, very laid-back place, which it is, I think, if you’re living here. But if you’re just visiting, and it’s early Spring, the only thing to do is hike around the neighboring mountains. And if it’s 10 degrees and lluvia lluvia lluvia todo la tiempo, there’s not a thing to do. I asked the guy at the tourist desk (my new best friend, BTW) for a place to “drink beer and play pool” and he laughed. In my face.
It also seems to be high school/middle school trip time. We saw a lot of kids in Bariloche (at the teenage dance club costume party, for instance) on these trips, and they’ve taken over the sleepy pueblito of El Bolson as well. Alon and I were looking for a place to stay our first night here and found a very nice looking one called Refugio Patagonico. We walked there in the rain to find that a school group had it booked for the next three days. So we found one close by called Posada del Buscador, which is where I am currently located. It is run by a very kindly, very religious, very mature couple who needed to know what our marital status was before allowing us beds. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice, cozy, dry place to spend a night, but I was ready to go after one night.
Hiking to Cerro Amigo in the rain:
Entonces, this morning I set out in the rain to find a hostel in the campo. I asked my BFF at the tourist office to give them a call for me and reserve a bed for the night, but when no one answered he told me that “they have a place for you, I’m sure.” I took a bus that would drop me off a Kilometro or two from the Altos del Sur and promptly missed my stop. By the time I walked back to the beginning of the mountain road I was soaked, but it took another half hour or so of climbing in the rain before I broke down and hailed a remise to take me the last Kilometro, where we found a big sign on a chain saying “Cerrado.” I know this story is getting long, and sorry, it doesn’t get any more interesting, but I need to describe some of the valleys, no?
I had picked up a brochure for El Pueblito, another promising hostel in the campo while discussing my options with Tourist Office BFF, and asked my kind taxista to drive me across town to find it. We found it, and it was an amazing building in a beautiful (albeit rainy) setting, but the moment I walked in, a good-natured, hirsute man in llama wool sweater told me that the place was booked full for the next two nights. Another school group. I didn’t even have time to take off the soggy 14-year-old on my back.
So here I am, surrounded by doilies, an extensive plate collection on the wall, bible sayings above my bed, and inquiries into my comings-and goings with every departure and arrival.
An extensive plate collection on the wall:
Here’s to better luck in Puerto Montt, no?
In Patagonia,
Soggy McPants
El Puerto de Patagonia
I’m busy finishing up my fourth day in Bariloche, still recovering from the sickness that I think I got on the bus and made much worse by having a lot of fun here and not resting at all.
This will be a quick rundown:
I came into Bariloche with a little bit of a mystery sickness, so didn’t do much the first night. The next morning I went to Club Andino to ask about backpacking where the grumpy, hirsute man behind the desk looked me up and down and recommended a 4-hour trek to Refugio Frey, which I decided to try out the next day. That afternoon, I took the turistas’ special, the Cerro Companario, which is a chairlift to a nearby peak that allows some pretty great views of the Lake District. I ran into some nice Israelis from the hostel at the chairlift and they decided to accompany me onward to Hotel LLao LLao where we walked around a bit and asked a confused ferry operator how to rent bikes. After a solid half hour of bad Spanish and pestering with questions everyone we saw on a bike, we decided to leave it for the next day, and I bumped out my refugio trek until the day after. That evening we went to (another) teenage dance club (this time with costumes, as it was the day before halloween) and when I ordered a Fernet & Coca, the teenager behind the bar asked me from where I came, evidently so a man standing on a table wearing a big 80’s wig and holding a microphone could point a laser at me and say “Bienvenidos, Estados Unidos!” or something.
At the Top of Cerro Companario:
We rented bikes the following day and did the Cirquito Chico around a big chunk of Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi. There were a lot of hills and I am not in fantastic shape, but it was a blast, even if Miri couldn’t quite remember how to ride a bike at first. Bariloche has got to have some of the most amazing views of Alpine-type (Andino-type?) mountain scenery in the world; I’m sure my pictures will not do it justice. And I must have worked an amazing amount of charm, because the nice Israelis decided to join me on the Refugio Frey trek.
Biking the Cirquito Chico:
Which we departed for the next day. We spent the evening before asking Nacho (behind the hostel counter) a whole lot of questions to about how we might get to the trailhead, but still managed to miss our bus and had to split a (albeit very barato) taxi, which seemed a little weird.
Nacho had talked us into taking the 8-hour, more scenic hike out to the refugio, so there was a bit of a rush to get there before dark (as our transportation fiasco made us start a bit late), and it was a pretty tough hike with a lot of elevation gain (even though the Club Andino guide said that it’s “easy-to-moderate”), and we felt a major shift in temperature from the bottom of the mountain to the top. So it was very satisfying to arrive at the refugio after hiking through a couple snowfields, a fair amount of cold, damp wind, and a whole lot of rocks, as the refugio was pretty much the coziest place on earth. Alan, the 19-year-old Barilochean single-handedly staffing the place, greeted us through the kitchen’s half-door and told us what to expect before asking us into the glowing little dining room-cum-parlor that served as the main common area of the building. It was, well, magical. We had brought food but it was almost as expensive to pay to use the kitchen as to have Alan prepare something, so we asked him to make us a couple sundried tomato pizzas, which he had to do by headlamp (one of the coolest, quaintest things I’ve seen in a long time). The pizzas, the wine we brought, the candlelight, the tiny wood stove heating up the equally tiny cabin to about 95 degrees, the full moon, the frozen lake behind us, the wind howling (howling!) outside, the fuzzy stunted cat hungry for affection, our fatigue, our feelings of accomplishment for having climbed a mountain (which we did), and the excitement we all had to be there made it an admittedly fantastic night.
Check out Miri’s tour of the refugio.
Alan making us pizza by headlamp:
Full moon night outside the refugio:
Before Starting the Trek Down; L to R: Yours, Alon, Noa, Miri
I think I’m leaving for El Bolson tomorrow. Unless this really is bronchitis, which means that I may stay here and watch movies instead.
Yours,
Chau-Chau Patagonia
Update: Not bronchitis, I´m fine. I just needed some sleep.
Observations from the Bus
1] I bought a copy of the second Harry Potter book in Spanish, (as they were out of the first one) at a shop in Salta. It was ostensibly to replace Under the Volcano, which is the AR$80 book that I left at the Hostel, but I’m finding it just as difficult to read, probably because I don’t know any Spanish.
2] We stayed at a “Five Star” hotel in Iguazu for a couple days for reasons that you’ll have to buy me a beer to learn, and I found out that in Argentina, you can pretty much put as many stars onto your hotel sign as you want. What’s Michelin going to do, sue you? However, the pool was nice and the young men working behind the reception desk were exceptionally kind and resourceful. And the orange juice was oh-so-fresh-squeezed.
3] I bought a low-end camera in Salta, too. If you know me, you know I can be unreasonably picky about material purchases, even those that I will probably lose (or break, or drop in a lake) in a month or two, so it was a bit heartbreaking to settle for some crappy camera. But it’s nice to have something to take pictures with other than the phone. Even if the battery dies after like 20 pictures.
4] As of press time, I’m about 3/4 through my massive bus ride down to Bariloche, and it feels like no time whatsoever has passed. This, my friends, is truly the way to travel. Everything is so comfy and they come around every few hours with cookies and coffee or little bits of candy or fancy hot meals. I got my own bottle of wine for dinner (just like last night), and I’m expecting to be served champagne in an hour or two to help monsieur get to sleep.
And that’s a nice segue into:
5] I’m pretty sure I’m gaining weight exponentially. I’ve heard some stories of people gaining massive amounts of poundage on trips down here, but running was helping to curb my lateral growth for a while. And now, not so much with the running. I’m not super worried about it or anything; this is pretty much just a warning that I may be a bit rounder when I come home. Try not to gape too much.
6] We met an amazing woman named Mierna (spelling terribly inaccurate) in Salta. You may recognize her name from the photo in which Eduardo shows Mierna what it feels like to dance with a man full of amor. But Mierna herself is pretty unforgettable. She’s working on her PhD, studying translations of the work of “a very important Brazilian novelist,” whose name I’ll never be able to remember, and traveling around the world in her spare time. My first impression of Mierna was that she’s an incredibly intelligent, very well-spoken woman, which all proved true. However, she’s Brazilian, and passionate, and really truly loves to enjoy her private life as well as teaching and studying and reading and translating and discoursing. And I felt so incredibly out of my league while attempting to discuss literary translations with her, but she never made me feel stupid, which is an amazing feat on her part.
7] Argentines love the 80’s. Not just the music, but the haircuts. And I’m not sure they’re being referential.
8] Also met a fellow in Salta named Biker Guy*. He’s an Irish fellow with a very strong Gaelic accent who decided to ride through South America on his bike. An admirable goal, no doubt an impressive undertaking. And a very odd guy. He came out with us my second night in Salta, and I spoke with him quite a bit but was really only able to understand five or six words all night. Also a bit of a drooler. But! He was riding all over South America! On his bike!
And finally,
9A] Federico. Combining the Argentine love of mullets, inappropriate romantic advances, and 80’s music, we have Federico. He was the bartender at the hostel in Salta, and he loved the ladies. And Jheri Curl. He was a charmer, though, and when Folkloric Dancing Night at the hostel came around, he was always one of the first to start clapping in unison. He also put my NorteAmericano dance moves to shame at the Salta toothpaste club.
9B] Fernando. Our safari-shorts-wearing, wisecracking, rugby-playing tour guide on the Cachi and Las Nubes trips was, I thought, a pretty cool guy. He even took those crazy pictures in the salt flats (while laying down in the dirt for the sake of his art). And when our minibus blew a flat on the way back from the mountain, he kept the group entertained by throwing around a rugby ball in the middle of a busy street, which was cool. But then I heard that he was laying it on a bit thick to one of the Kiwi girls that we met, and when she disappeared after accepting a moto ride from him that evening, I think he may actually have been a bit sleazy. Good hair, though. Definitely at least 90’s hair.
*not his real name.
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