Parque Nacional los Glaciares

Our last two stops in Patagonia were El Calafate and El Chaltèn, both to visit the Parque Nacional los Glaciares. It was quite a schlep to get there--nearly to the end of the world--but well worth it.

El Calafate is a small-ish tourist town just outside the national park and near Glacier Perito Moreno. Out of 300 glaciers in the national park, Perito Moreno is one of two that are still advancing. There are tons of tour options, including a couple of ice treks, but we did the most low-key tour and saved our ice trek for El Chaltèn.

Perito Moreno was absolutely beautiful and I had never seen anything like it. The white of the glacier was shot-through with some of the most gorgous blue hues and the jagged ice formations at the front were 20 stories high. It is 5 km. wide and that put it into perspective for me--a 5-k race wide.

We had three hours on the balconies that overlook the front of the glacier and it only takes 45 minutes to walk the circuit, so Clint and I eventually took a coffee break at the snack bar. Afterwards, we went back for one last look and the balconies. All of a sudden, a chunk of ice the size of a 6-story building broke and crashed into the lake. An older Argentine couple was standing next to us and we all saw every second of it, even feeling the ground shake beneath us. After savoring the moment, the Argentine man turned to us and said, ¨¡Spectacular!¨ My thought exactly.

El Chaltèn is an even smaller town (with a year-round population of 500) that is actually in the national park. It is in a glacial valley at the base of Cerros Torre and Fitz Roy--two dramatic rock mountains that draw climbers from around the world.

We spent four days hiking all through the park, seeing stunning views as the clouds cleared from Fitz Roy in the afternoons.

One mirador about four hours into the park really took our breath away. It overlooked a small glacier, its glacial lake, and Fitz Roy. As exhausted as we were when we got back to our hostel that night, we knew that we had just been on one of the best hikes of our lives.

The next day we went on an ice trek that included 21 miles of hiking, a zip-line river crossing, walking on Glacier Torre with crampons, and doing a small ice climb. We did not get great views because the weather did not cooperate, but it didn`t matter because we were on such an adventure. Thank goodness for Clint, who took especially good care of me and reminded me to go as slowly as I wanted on the more dangerous parts of the trail.

A couple of days later, we left El Chaltèn for Buenos Aires, a city of 13 million. It has been interesting to go from a town without a single bank to a city with 48 barrios (neighborhoods). Oh, and how`s this for a small world? We met a nice couple our age in the tiny El Calafate airport--who live in Greenville, South Carolina. Then they had the seats directly behind us on the plane.

Hasta luego de Buenos Aires... we will write about our big-city experiences soon.

Top Five Argentine Food Groups

I must do a top five list in honor of my HippoFriends (a tradition inspired by the movie High Fidelity). Without further ado, the top five Argentine food groups:

1) Mayonaise (mayonesa): It is a table condiment, sometimes even over and above salt and pepper. There is an entire section for it at the grocery store. Our host family`s son ate it with every meal, even in his lentil soup. They serve it on burritos instead of sour cream at ¨Mexican restaurants.¨ Enough said.

2) Sweets (dulces): Sweets are on every corner, in every store. The preferred ways of piping sugar into the bloodstream are by way of chocolate, pastries, dulce de leche (a carmel spread), ice cream, and alfajores (a glorified moonpie that Argentines can`t imagine living without).

3) Ham & Cheese (jamon y queso): It`s hard to get away from ham & cheese here. There are ham & cheese pizzas, ham & cheese croissants (media lunas), ham & cheese toast, ham & cheese flavored crackers and potato chips, and, of course, ham & cheese sandwiches. In fact, you can`t get any other kind of sandwich without looking really hard. If you like turkey & cheese sandwiches, you´re plain ol`out of luck.

4) Steak (bife, lomo, asado): The steak in Argentina is famous around the world, and now I understand why. It is truly incredible and melts in your mouth, even at the dodgy-ist looking restaurants and bars. I think that one of the Argentine secrets to cooking the perfect steak is an amazing ¨chimichurri¨sauce, which they douse the steak in before, during, and after cooking it.

5) Potatoes (papas): Potatoes are the only commonly served vegetable around. Potatoes are fried, baked, mashed... prepared all the usual ways. But green veggies are nowhere to be found on restaurant menus.

Puerto Madryn

Ashley and I said goodbye to Bariloche and headed East across Argentina to the beach town of Puerto Madryn. We had no idea we would be there for the best time of year to see wildlife. And that seemed to be the theme of this city, Wildlife. We found a good hostel in town and dumped our bags after a 14 hour bus ride and then decided to take a walk on the beach. After a few minutes Ashley looked up and said ¨look, Flamingos¨ and sure enough those pink birds from the 80s were there on the beach. I was not used to seeing them without sunglasses and zig zag paterns on strech pants, but they do exist in real life.

After getting settled in town we booked a tour of Punto Tombo, a penguin colony visit that included a dolphin viewing excurison. The commodore dophins are the smallest and fastest in the world with a large white mark covering most of their body (the rest of the body is black). They loved to play with the boat and gave the crowd a good show. The dolphin came right up to the side of the boat and got close enough to blow water on our faces.

The penguin colony was a great experience. They are not scared of humans at all and we could get really close. The magellin peguins are really small and walk really funny. After seeing them swim it´s easy to tell they are built for water much more than for land. The colony hosts over a million penguins and couples return to the same nest to lay their eggs every year. It´s amazing they can remember the same nest in a massive landcape of nests. This particular peguin seemed to be pointing to his house for us.

The next adventure was to the Peninsula Valdez, which is a wildlife preserve and the breeding grounds of southern right whales. We were incredibly luckly because we were able to see whales all day and probably saw a total of 30 whales with their calves, all in all. Our tour was a lot of fun and certainly action packed. We rode about 15 minutes out of town and pulled over to beach to see a mother with her calf (the first photo). Later we borded a vessel into the bay and saw a ton of whales. Two main highlights were a rare white calf and an extremely close encounter that took our breath away. We happened to be on the right side of the boat at the right time and saw the enormous mammal start to rise right under us. The whale was so close that we could almost touch it. My heart raced and it was truly a once in a lifetime memory. We did not get great pictures because we were so captivated by these creatures and did not want to see it all through the camera lens.

Elephant seals are fat lazy animals that like to have sex. They don´t really do anything and look funny when they try to move. Not much else to say. The llama looking thing is a guanaca which is common in Patagonia.

In total we saw seals, dolphins, whales, flamingos, guancos, wild Patagonian hares, armadillos, and an ostrich-like bird in just 4 days. To cap it off we had beers at a beach bar on our last day and saw two more whales breaching in the near distance. Next was a 23 hour bus ride south to El Calafate for glacier trekking and jagged mountain hiking. More to come soon.

Clint`s Birthday & Goodbye to Bariloche

Clint`s birthday was 10/14 (a week ago today) and just before we left Bariloche. The weather was absolutely BEAUTIFUL so we rented bicycles and rode the Circuito Chico for 25 km--all around Lago Moreno.

This excursion held a couple of surprises. When we started the ride, a neighborhood dog came right along with us. Clint tried to send him home, but this dog was coming with us whether we wanted him to or not. He sprinted and raced us downhill, and patiently waited for us when we were going uphill. We got to an overlook about half-way through the ride and met a local man who was selling trinkets and drinks on the side of the road. He told us that this dog runs along with tourist cyclists on Circuito Chico every single day.

So we stopped and had a picnic on the lake with our new dogfriend (whom we named Zenith).

The second surprise came towards the end of the ride when we found a dinosaur "museum." Let me just tell you how excited Clint was to find a random dinosaur exhibit on his birthday. Zenith waited for us in the parking lot while we explored the dinosaurs, which happened to be more like giant dino. toys scattered around outside. Clint did his famous T-Rex... a lot.

That evening we watched Argentina beat Uruguay to qualify for the World Cup. The streets went wild after the game and it was a really fun sight. Most cars were honking and waving Argentine flags out the windows. Finally at the end of the jam-packed day, Mati came to our hostel and I made lasanga for our new friends. It was a great way to celebrate Clint`s 28th and a nice last hoorah in Bariloche.

We left a couple of days later and Mati and his friend, Lucas, met us at the bus station to say goodbye. It was bittersweet to leave our friends and such an incredible place... but we were thrilled to begin the next leg of our journey. On to Puerto Madryn!

We will post about our Puerto Madryn adventures soon, but are now departing on a 21-hr bus trip (YUCK) to El Calafate. Just a teaser: Puerto Madryn included dolphins, flamingos, guanacos, penguins, whales, elephant seals, and an armadillo.

Catch-Up

This past week has been pretty low-key. We`ve settled into life here in Bariloche: we have a favorite brew-pub, know where to go hiking, and have figured out our favorite living situation. So we moved back into the hostel yesterday to save a little money, allow me to cook more, and meet new friends. We plan to leave Bariloche on Thursday (a few days early) because we have decided to head SOUTH before north--and I´m thrilled. Northern Patagonia here in Bariloche is incredible, but I want to see the romanticized arctic Patagonia. I want to watch glaciers and see penguin colonies.

Here are some highlights from this week:

* I have to tell you about a hair phenomena here in Argentina: the mullet-dreds. That`s right, a mullet with dread-locks. Here is proof (which happens to be in our favorite happy hour brew-pub)










* We hiked to a ¨refugio¨(refuge cabin for hikers, which they have on most mountains around here) on Cerro Otto and the whole experience was a very pleasant surprise. The view was nice and we met the caretaker -- a wonderful guy who spoke slowly and said things like, "today is a beautiful day to be alive." The refugio itself was the original building for the first ski school in Patagonia. It smelled like the clubhouse at Tuckaseegee and felt like home. The photo above the mantel is the cool old mountain man (Mr. Meilling) who started the ski school in the 30`s. He dug his own grave near the refugio about four years before he died.






* Mati took us on another hike on Thursday and--I know I keep saying this--but the view was even more breathtaking than any of the others. There was nothing for hundreds of miles--just lakes and mountains. The only signs of civilization were a road to a refugio on a distant mountain and a boat leaving an isolated port. It felt like true Patagonia. Clint said, ït is so increadibly beautiful and so lonely at the same time.¨ It was nice to share the experience with Clint, who has dreamed of Patagonia for so long.

Week 2 Photos

This is Ash again... finally posting some photos that we uploaded about a week ago. They are in opposite order, and we have already written about some of them.

Last weekend Clint and I went to a small hippie town called El Bolson. They have a huge craft market, which I really enjoyed. There were also amazing sculptures all through town. The campground we stayed in was... interesting. We accessed it over a footbridge, it was in a poorer neighborhood, and we were the only campers. But the woman who runs it lives on-site and was so nice--and it had a view of the river. It was quite an adventure and we were ready to come back to Bariloche after hiking the next day.

Oh my... the chocolate factory tour. Our tour guide was a sweet Argentine who spoke English because she studied abroad in Miami when she was in high school. The chocolate was so rich and chocolate history is fascinating.

Here you can see the trees` cinnamon-colored bark in Parque Nacional los Arrayenes. The second photo is a lagoon beside the same trail. You might be able to make out horses grazing in the distance on the left.

My 2nd favorite view was on our Parque Nacional los Arrayenes hike. The water in Lago Nahuel Huapi is snowmelt from the Andes surrounding the glacial valley--it`s very clear.

I´ve tried to be adventurous with food... and sometimes it doesn´t work out so well. This "pancho completo" (hot dog all-the-way) had tomato sauce and crushed potato chips on top. hehehe, yum.

El Calafate is a native Patagonian plant and in a couple of weeks we will travel to a town named for it in Southern Patagonia. I loved the bell-shaped flowers and apparently it produces sweet berries used in local jams.

Cerro Campanario: Clint´s favorite view so far.

Parque National las Arrayenes

Hello! Clint & Ashley together here...

We left Bariloche for the first time last weekend to visit another town, Villa Angostora, and a new national park, Parque National las Arrayenes. It was a quick 1-hour bus ride with beautiful landscape. We started early and Ash kept trying to sneak a little sleep, but Clint was so excited and kept saying "Look at that rabbit/deer/landscape/lake/cow!" He was right, it was too good to miss. After breakfast we headed into the park for a 15-mile round-trip hike through a peninsula. In the first mile, there were two overlooks with incredible views (honestly, they keep getting better and better). The forest was amazing with huge 100-year-old trees; it seemed well-preserved. The forest itself was much prettier than the other hikes we´ve been on. But, the highlight was at the very end of the peninsula where there was an Arrayene forest. The Arrayene tree is a rare type of myrtle with cinnamon colored bark and deep green foliage. They really are beautiful. Another funny thing about this hike is that we encountered a group of cows grazing in the forest... and then a group of horses. We are not really sure what that was about. We were exhausted when we finally got back to Villa Angostora so we had dinner and caught the bus back to Bariloche.

Two weeks into school and we are starting to see a difference in our Spanish. We´ve even gotten compliments from strangers! But every day we realize how much more there is to learn. Mati is very patient with us. He also took us to happy hour one afternoon this week at a microbrewery. We sampled local beer all afternoon until Mati had to leave and go to school (tipsy). We hit another happy hour on the way home.

Last night Ashley cooked lasanga for our host family and, according to Clint, it was incredible. She had fun wandering the grocery store & verduria (veggie store) and getting creative with what she could find.

We are now 1/2-way through our stay in Bariloche and starting to think about the next leg of our journey. We feel like there is so much of Patagonia yet to see that we could spend all three months here. Honestly, we may try to head south for a couple of weeks to see glaciers, penguins, and whales.

Photos to come again soon...