I´m writing this update from Puerto Natales, Chile. I´m three days or so into my voyage into Patagonia, with a week remaining before my return to Montevideo.
The journey began April 3rd before dawn. Hustling out of the house, at 5:45 a.m. my roommate and I arrived at the bus stop just in time to catch the morning bus to Buenos Aires. A two and a half hour bus ride was followed by an hour in a ferry, which placed me in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately, we didn´t have time to enjoy the city as we had a plane to catch. I did, however, meet up briefly with Mike-exchanging hugs and foot apparel (A pair of hiking shoes for some soccer cleats).
After waiting waay longer than we expected in the airport(and having a brief brush with B ... or D level fame-music group Fisherspooner) we boarded our plane for the 3 hour hop to Calafate. I expected el Calafate-which is known for its proximity to a multitude of glaciers-to look much different than it did. Looking out the window of our tiny plane one thing was certain, we were faaarr from civilization. The landscape was what would be described as steppe, arid, rolling hills covered in small brush. Painted red mounds of clay in some areas, and the ocasional river snaking it´s way haphazardly across the plains as if God had decided to hastily sign his work. All of the lakes and rivers here have an eerie misty-grey color, the result of melting glacial waters apparently. The only sign of human inhabitance came seconds before landing, a narrow one lane road leading away from the one runway airport.
We made it to the hostel without incident, and luckily immediately ran into two other exchange students from the program in the same hostel. They acoompanied us on most of the events in the next day or two. As we arrived at night it was a "chill out" day, so I hung out with Tyler-one of the students-and drank some wine, told some stories, and played a little guitar in the "chill out loft" of the hostel with 2 German girls, and Irish girl and a young Irish couple. Hostels are generally pretty cool places from my experience(more on the exceptions to the rule in a bit)
Day 2 took us to Perito Moreno glacier. The most active glacier in the world, it was really something to see. While not the biggest glacier in the region, it is the most famous, and I´m told it is much more impressive than what Glacier National Park in the US or Canada has to offer. We took a boat trip near the glacier first, which was pretty cool. The rest of the day was spent looking at the glacier from land. It´s really, really impressive. 30 kilometers long, and a couple kilometers wide and fifty or sixty yards tall of pure, jagged ice. The thing makes an incredible ammount of noise as it´s constantly creaking and cracking, occasionaly letting off massive chunks of ice to go crashing into the water below. I only saw one really impressive calving, but the piece that fell had to be larger than most houses and was indeed pretty damn cool.
That night we went to a "libro bar" which means literally, book bar. It seemed to be a play on the common "resto bar" or "resto pubs" which are restaurant-bars as you may have guessed. As Tyler put it "This place is great, it combines two of my favorite interests, books and alcohol. If only they had some paintings in here." The kid´s a nut. It was a really cool vibe though, sort of like a coffee house but with really good drinks. Tyler´s white russian stands out, which came with a big iceburg of home made whipped cream floating in it to be mixed in. The result was something that defies description and was worth it´s steep price tag. 35 Argentine pesos, almost 10 dollars US, which could buy 2 and a half such drinks almost anywhere in Montevideo. El Calafate was a pretty cool, trendy little town though, and reminded me a lot of Boulder or Jackson Hole or Park City or one of those sort of places. I was expecting run down outpost for adventurers, a mixture of poor locals and bearded trekkers and outfitting stores. The family friendly tourist nature of the glaciers has elevated el Calafate to an oasis like status, a very posh place for Southern Patagonia.
I also cooked an asado last night. I had seen it done a few times before but never managed my own. However, when we saw a parilla(grill) in the kitchen-chillout room of our new hostel(we had to move as we stayed an extra night and the other one filled up) we thought it would be fun to give it a stab. As the resident chef and most experienced Uruguayan, I was elected to the position of asadero-grill man. After buying ingredients I came to the sobering discovery that it´s done a bit differently on this part of the continent. They use charcoal(carbonized wood lumps, not briquettes) instead of wood for one. This proved a challenge given that we had no lighter fluid. After a lot of effort I got a small little bed of coals going, enough to cook one sausage at a time.
Luckily, after a bit of struggling, a local noticed our plight and offered a hand. Apparently there was a FLAME THROWER in the wall. With the power of fire our problems were quickly solved and we had ourselves a decent little barbecue. I´ve got a picture in front of the south american barbecue in my Daddy´s T-Shirt for you guys at home.
Puerto Natales, my current location, is exactly what I had expected from el Calafate. This place sucks. We are in a weird little hostel, which is actually an elderly couples house. It´s 9 dollars a night though and we have a TV in the room. The whole place does smell bad though, and is moderately dirty. Oh well, Í forgot to bring my copy of South America on a Shoestring to find any preferred hostels and this place was CHEAP.
Just got back from enjoying some Chilean salmon and mashed potatoes, which was pretty good and reasonably cheap, and loading up on groceries. We´ve got sleeping bags for -10 degrees celsius, a tent, sticks of salami, crackers, bread, trail mix and dried fruit. I also bought a Swiss Army Knife for 30 bucks, probablly over paid a bit but I might need it-to cut my cured meat if nothing else.
Tomorrow the bus leaves at 7:30 am for Torres Del Paine national park. What follows will be 5 days and 4 nights or trekking and camping amidst beautiful scenery. This region is known for its volatile weather, heavy winds and wetness-these clouds havent seen land since Japan and like to dump off their payloads on the mountains apparently. Cross your fingers that we get some good weather and some good pictures, I´ll have uploads and stories in a week or so.
RJ
P.S. Notes coming on our big soccer game at some point-just suffice to say that we won.
