Ushuaia, Uruguay and Home

The end of the world - Ushuaia

Yet another long bus ride was required to reach Ushuaia. Unfortunately there was no night bus so we had to spend pretty much a full day getting there. Tierra del Fuego is an island seperate from mainland south america that is split evenly between Chile and Argentina. We had to catch a  short ferry ride across to Tierra del Fuego, and watched Dolphins in the water alongside the boat. Ushuaia sits on the Argentinian side at the southern tip close to the Chile border. Its a really pretty little port town. It has a backdrop of mountains (fairly low level for patagonia, up to 1600m) and sits in a bay so there are mountains visible all around.

Sea Lions

We only had one full day there, so took an all day trip that was split between a half day boat tour around the beagle channel and a land tour.This included a visit to a sea lion community on a rocky island in the channel. Sea lions look great so close up, there was one enormous male bull that looked the size of a car. After that we visited another penguin colony. Penguins look so awkward on land, but when they entered the water they were very graceful, moving at incredible speeds, looking like they were hardly putting any effort in to move.
 We visited an Estancia (ranch) that was established by a British missionary in the 1800's, complete with English gardens! The most 


only 13400km to London!

 interesting part was an area where scientists researched sea mammals, using the bodies of animals that had unfortunately been beached (whales) or caught in nets (dolphins).
There was a gruesome workshop where a couple of workers were stripping fat from Whale bones using a vat of acid and knives, and a couple of freshly skinned Dolphin heads. The museum was impressive, displaying many remains of enormous Whales alongside Dolphins and Sea lions.

We had an extra half day in Ushuaia as our flights back to Buenos Aires where delayed by a few hours so took a trek up one of the ski runs (no snow) to get a view of the town but the visibility was poor . It also started snowing so we cut it short.
One thing about Ushuaia is the weather changes in an instant - sunny, then suddenly its raining, then snowing.

On mountain outside Ushuaia

Our taxi driver to the airport was a huge premiership fan, and had instantly bonded with Emma by saying he loved Alan Shearer!
Its interesting that nearly every South American i spoke to about football loved the Premiership and said it was there favourite league, more than the Spanish league because its more exciting to watch.

We had a couple more days left and had exhausted Buenos Aires, so we took a ferry for the short hop over to Uruguay. We arrived in Colonia then took a bus to the capital Montevideo and visited an Aunt of Emmas who has lived there for several years teaching English. Montevideo is a pleasant city, far smaller than Buenos Aires and has a friendlier, small town feeling about it. We went out for Steak and a large quantity of Red Wine.

Plaza, Colonia in Uruguay

Uruguay recently overtook Argentina as the biggest per head consumer of steak in the world, which apparently caused a huge amount of shame and debate in Argentina! They also did a lot better in the world cup, i don't think Argentina are enjoying being suddenly outdone by their little cousins in the North.

We spent the final night in Buenos Aires and went to see a tango show. It was fairly enjoyable. I really liked the actual Tango bits but it turned into bit of an all round Argentina theme show. There was an annoying cowboy/indian bit (dressed as gauchos, playing ubiquitous "ethnic" pan pipe music same as you hear everywhere in Peru and Bolivia) and renditions of My Way (in spanish) and Don't cry for me Argentina (surprise!!).

So that is the end of the trip. Its been really amazing, as enjoyable and exciting as i hoped it would be. I met some great people, saw some stunning scenery, had some adventure, learnt to speak spanish (to a degree!).
Its scratched a huge itch on one level, but you meet so many people that talk about how wonderful other countries are that they have visited, you find your travel wishlist lengthening not shortening.

Having said that, i was looking forward to coming home. I felt surprisingly happy as i saw England for the first time in 14 weeks as we descended into heathrow.
Its late November, and its cold, wet, and dark but what can you do? Its home.
Bring on the curry!

Southern Patagonia

Perito Moreno Glacier

El Calafate sits in southern end of the lake district in Patagonia, and serves almost exclusively as a jumping off point for tourists wanting to see the nearby Perito Moreno glacier.
Perito Moreno is an enormous glacier, at its front it rises 40-70m out of the water and a further 140m below the waters surface.

We had freakishly good weather on our visit, it was mild weather and blue sky. The site of that much ice is difficult to take in! From the viewing platforms at the front it looks like a huge field of milky coloured ice. There was occasional loud bangs like gunshot as cracks opened up

Lake Capri, Los glacieres national park

on the glacier surface because of the enormous pressures it is under as the glacier advances. As we watched the front there was also huge roars as ice at the front collapsed into the water. In the lake surrounding the front there were large lumps of ice that had broken off from the glacier previously.

We took a trek on the top of the glacier that was fascinating. I´ve never worn crampons before so they took a bit of effort getting used to (emma got used to them more quickly, evident as she tried to make me tango on the ice while i was still staggering around trying to walk

Torres del Paine park, Chile

properly!) but we trekked for a couple of hours and got a great tour of different features on the surface. There was deep cracks of a very unusual blue where the ice had opened up recently, very deep turquise lakes and sink holes, and streams running along the top. The end was perfect, we were given grants whiskey with ice from the glacier! Walking off the glacier turned out to be trickier than walking onto it.


The following day we took a 3 hour bus to the village of El Chalten, a small village that was built specifically for trekkers and climbers visiting

Glacial lake, Torres del Paine

the Los Glacieres national park. Not really sure how to describe it as i ran out of superlatives long ago! It was the most beautiful scenery i have ever seen. We did a couple of treks over 2 days, one was 2 hours to the Lake Capri and it was perfect. More lakes, mountains and pine forests but it was perfect. Huge granite peaks towered towered away in the distance alongside snow capped mountains, and the sky was cloudless. The park ranger said it was very unusal weather so we got very lucky again.

Penguins

Although we were running out of time a little. we wanted to see the Chilean side of Patagonia aswell, so we went over the border to the town of Puerto Natales.
The first day we visited a penguin colony a short distance out of the city, the Penguins were breeding and had made there way there from the falklands (ooops, i mean Las Malvinas......!) and Brazil. They were very funny, looking very undignified waddling around a few feet away from us. That night we managed to make a curry! Much to my surprise the local supermarket sold curry powder and loads of indian spices, so i made a half decent effort given the circumstances! They also sold a great range of vegetables, far more than were available in Argentina, so we had a good choice of ingredients aswell.

The second day we visited Torres del Paine National park on an all day trip, as we didn´t have time to do one of the recommended treks that take several days. It was similar scenery to the Argentinian side, although there were large amounts of Guanacos (similar to Llamas) and a sizable Puma population that are thankfully nocturnal so we weren´t in any danger from them. It was beautiful of course, but the highlight was a large glacial lake we visited at the end of the day - the glacier was 19km away in the distance, but huge icebergs had broken off and were sitting in the water at the far end of the lake where we were. A couple were 20 meters tall, and must have been enormous when they first broke away.

We crossed the border the final day as we headed back to Argentina for the final southern leg to Ushuaia. Emma did a great job smuggling the curry spices over the border, so we have more curry to look forward to at least in Argentina........!

Northern Patagonia, Whales and the Welsh

Los Alerces National Park

Lake near Bariloche

Los Alerces National Park

We had a relatively short bus ride to Bariloche (6 hours!). Bariloche sits on the northern end of the lake district in northern Patagonia. Its a beautiful location, surrounded by snow capped mountains and sitting on the edge of a huge turquoise lake. The area feels like Switzerland, even the buildings are similar style - chalets and ski lodges are everywhere. We took a couple of walks in the surrounding area, then a couple of days later we got the bus to Esquel. Esquel was yet another town that didn´t feel particularly touristy! Esquel serves as the base for visits to the Los Alerces national park, a huge park about an hour away. On the first day we took a bus to the town of Trevelin, originaly settled by welsh immigrants in the late 1800´s when they moved west away from the east coast in search of more land for farming. It was a sleepy little place, the people looked very British complete with pasty faces! We went into a welsh tearoom (one of several) and had a welsh tea, a huge plate of cakes and scones. I ate those, Emma had a pint of tea. We then found a fantastic welsh history museum with original items from the first Welsh settlers.

Los Alerces National Park

The second day we took a tour to Los Alerces Park, but we struggled to find a tour originaly as they are 2 months away from the start of the season. We ended up on a trip full of Argentinian OAP´s, and the tour was in Spanish! The people were great though, they kept coming over and explaining things to us (in spanish, but slower than the guide) and had a great sense of humour. I have perfected my football conversations in Spanish, so talked a lot about Messi, Maradona, and the world cup with the Guys in the group. Emma talked about Guitierez of Newcastle! The scenery was predictably breathtaking - lakes, mountains and pine forests.

Mother Whale off Puerto Madryn

We took an overnight bus to Puerto Madryn on the Atlantic coast. It is an unattractive seaside town, and was the first town the Welsh settled in 1885. There is still evidence of the first shelters they built in the clay next to the beach. The main reason was to visit the Whales on the coast that were there to breed. We took a boat trip out to see the Whales and watched them for a couple of hours, a mother and her pup played close to the boat. It was wonderful watching them so close. Later in the day we also went to see a seal colony further down the coast, hundreds of Seals were lazing around on the beach conserving energy waiting for the tide to come in and carry them back into the sea.

Seal and pups

That night we took yet another long bus ride (this country is far too big!!) for 20hours south to a town called Rio Gallegos which was very unpleasant looking. We had to wait for 4 hours for a connecting bus to El Calafate so wondered around the town for a while before giving up and going back to the bus station. The next bus took 5 hours so we got to the hostal at 1am. Far too much travelling in the last few days, and we are still nearly 1000km from Tierra Del Fuego where we catch a flight back to Buenos Aires next week.