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Patagonia: Whales, Dinosaurs and an Incredible Glacier

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Our first taste of Patagonia was not of the windswept mountain and glacial scenery that has made the region famous, but of a coastal area as close to Buenos Aires as to Parque Nacional los Glaciares. After a long bus trip from Córdoba we arrived in Puerto Madryn on the Peninsula Valdés on Argentina’s east coast, roughly halfway down the length of the country. The highlight of our stay there was a whale-watching boat trip at Puerto Pirámides – we saw two sets of mother-and-child whales, and one swam right past our boat (easily within five metres). It was pretty thrilling to see what you could see, but I don’t think whale-watching is as great as I heard it described by others the day before, since you simply don’t see enough of the animal.

From Trelew a bit further south from Puerto Madryn, we considered a dolphin-spotting trip and an excursion to see penguins, but in the end we didn’t do either (the latter because we know we’re going to see penguins shortly in Antarctica). Instead we visited the excellent dinosaur museum in Trelew, which was very well presented and contained impressive fossils, and otherwise tried to stay out of the rain.

From the coast we took another overnight bus trip that took more than 24 hours all told, with a stopover in Rio Gallegos, past the never-ending emptiness of Patagonia to the heart of the region – or at least its tourist heart. (In the meantime, less than two months after being further north on the globe than we’d ever been before in Estonia, we’re now further south than we’ve ever been.) Around the Glaciers National Park are the two things we most wanted to see/do in Argentine Patagonia – visit the famous Perito Moreno Glacier, still advancing even as almost all other glaciers in the world are retreating due to climate change, and experience Patagonian trekking for the first time in the area around Mt. Fitz Roy. We started with the glacier, and were very lucky in this cold, windswept land to have a sunny day for our visit (especially as every day since has been overcast, very windy and a bit rainy).

Perito MorenoThere are barely enough superlatives in any language to describe the wondrous glacier. Imagine jagged glacial cliffs as tall as skyscrapers (60 metres high), sparkling white and a gorgeous light blue in the sunlight. Imagine the thunderous roar of the glacier as it creaks and groans and then imagine the sight of chunks of ice bigger than cars breaking from the main structure and plunging into Lake Argentina below with a deafening crash, now resigned to the life of a floating iceberg. And finally imagine that what you’re seeing is just – pardon the pun – the tip of the iceberg: the glacier stretches back 30 kilometres. We spent four-and-a-half hours looking at the glacier, mesmerised the entire time. I rate it not only as the biggest highlight of this second South American trip so far but also, along with the glacier and peak of Mt. Rakaposhi in Pakistan and the 8000m peak amphitheatre of the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal, as one of the top three natural sights I’ve seen (with apologies to the Egyptian White Desert, Cappadocia in Turkey, Laguna Paron in Peru, Fairy Meadows in Pakistan, Zhangzhajie in China and many others).

Sunburned but happy, we left El Calafate a couple of days ago for El Chaltén, the base for trekking expeditions into the northern part of the same national park that contains Perito Moreno. Pending the weather (always an issue in Patagonia; we will not get the eternally blue skies of our Nepal or Kyrgyz treks here), we’re hoping to do a multi-day excursion into the national park for views of Cerro Torre and Mt. Fitz Roy, and several glacial lakes as well.

Central Argentina: wine tours and Spanish classes

Friday, November 20th, 2009

It’s been a while since my last post, mostly because we haven’t been anywhere in the past two weeks nearly as captivating as Valparaíso, and because I’ve been pretty busy this week taking Spanish classes in Córdoba, losing my credit card, trying to book a trip to Antarctica, etc.

Wine TourThe day after my last post, we left Santiago after a brief stay and took our second trip over the Andes in as many weeks. This one wasn’t as spectacular as the first but was still quite impressive, and we emerged on the other side back in Argentina and in the city of Mendoza. Mendoza itself doesn’t really have many (any?) major tourist sights, but it is a surprisingly pleasant place, well laid out, with shady, tree-lined streets, sidewalk cafes and restaurants, and a slow pace vibe. We only stayed long enough to do the almost obligatory wine tour in the vineyards outside town, where 70 per cent of all Argentine wine is produced. We stopped at two bodegas (a small, family-run one and a larger, commercial one), a family olive oil factory, and an liquor-making house, where the tasting of the alcoholic chocolate mint drink was so good that we had no choice but to buy a bottle to take with us.

Jesuit EstanciaHeading north (as part of our rather unusual route that is supposed to be leading us south), we stayed a couple of nights in the town of Alta Gracia, where Che Guevara lived as a boy. His house is now a museum, and we stayed next door to it with an Argentine poet and his Cuban wife, who have turned their house into a restaurant for the museum visitors and also rent out a couple of rooms. After staying in hostels for the previous week or so, it was nice to enjoy the quirky atmosphere of a poet’s house for a couple of nights. The museum itself is well done and worth a visit, especially for Che aficionados like me. The other highlight of Alta Gracia is a Jesuit estancia complex in the centre of town, featuring a church, two open courtyards, a smithy, various residential halls etc. We liked the small-town atmosphere and good food and spent two relaxing days in Alta Gracia preparing ourselves for the upcoming week in Córdoba.

Córdoba itself is an OK place, with a few nice colonial buildings and a lot more ugly, brick high-rises. With seven universities and a strong Jesuit history, it’s one of the main learning centres of Argentina and I decided to comply. Having been pretty discouraged by my level of Spanish comprehension at the wine tour in Mendoza, I decided to take a week of classes in Córdoba to help my on my way to the ever-elusive level of fluency that I’m aiming for – in all, 15 hours of one-on-one lessons spread over five days. I’m really glad I did it, as I learned a lot and now pretty much know all the grammar that I need to know – I just need to put it all together and improve my vocabulary and everything should be fine. In the meantime, there’s no rest for the wicked, as I’m reading my first real Spanish book and loving it – the first volume of the fantasy trilogy Memorías de Idhún, and my pseudo-Spanish-teachers from afar, Ben and Marina, are launching Notes in Spanish Gold on Monday which could keep me busy for a while!

After my last class this afternoon, we’re taking an overnight bus to the Peninsula Valdés, our first taste of Patagonia, where we’re expecting to see whales as well as penguins with (hopefully) very newborn chicks. After that it’s onto the Fitzroy region and the first of several long treks.

The curious charm of Valparaíso

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

I’m not quite sure how to begin an entry on the quirks and unorthodox beauty of Valparaíso, but here goes anyway: it’s somehow fitting that such an unusually shaped country like Chile should contain within it an equally unusually ... [Continue reading this entry]

The Atacama Desert

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

South America - what a continent! (Please excuse me while I gush like a child for a paragraph.) In many debates over the years with Wendy or other travellers, I have tended to choose Asia as my preferred continent ... [Continue reading this entry]