Life As Canvas

From Ushuaia to El Calafate (glacier Perito Moreno) to El Chalten (Mount Fitz Roy)

Somewhere down in the depths of South America, way down in the big toe of Argentina in that mysterious place called Patagonia, if you’re lucky enough to get an open seat you can take a bus from one backpacking town to another. There, you’ll bump along dirt roads to cross rolling hills of yellow grass and farms that stretch on for hours. Some guides call this an expanse of nothing but to call it nothing is plainly rude. In early morning light the fields ripple out on either side of long gravel highways, blue shadows hardening thier lines across the sky.

Then curves turn to dips and dips lead to lakes of turquoise and jade, also streaked by shadows of cottony clouds, turning water into striped gemstones. And when, from your perch in your bus seat, you think your heart might burst from the clashes of colors, of honeys and greens and blues, the mountains peek up above it all, islands of texture, rock, ice, snow.

The mountains, you can tell, know of thier effect on first-time passers-by and like to veil themselves in clouds, letting the wind whip around them and, in an instant of awe, they’re naked before you, the sun streaming in from cracks in the sky. Suddenly you realize that all of the surrounding color, the softness of the open fields, the grasses and lakes, were only conceived of to praise the rough wall of rock that towers above them.

Not far from the mountains fit for fairy tales, where glaciers slip down granite peaks like lazy lizards and crash, with thunderous authority, into the sea forming floating islands of ice fit to fill stadiums, there lives a shade of blue that, once you set your eyes upon it, you’re sure it’s the blue all other blues strive to become.

Floating Palaces

Cracking and Splashing Glaicers

Into the Castle

Glowing deep in the bellies of bobbing icebergs, it is the original blue. It chills with but a glance and shimmers at you from it’s home, a chunk of glacier turned castle of ice. I am sure that this is where blue was conceived.

What more can I say? Mountain hikes and frigid lakes are summertime in Patagonia and I am all rosy-cheeked with some mix of awe and windburn. I didn’t think places like this really existed – and I’ll never look at an ice-cube the same way again.

Next stop: Bariloche, “Alpine” village of the Andes, known for spectacular views and (pinch me, please) extraordinary chocolate.

Tags: El Calafate, El Chalten, Glaciers, Icebergs, Patagonia, Perito Moreno, Travel

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2007 at 12:08 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.