So after Puerto Madryn and our nature adventures we headed south to El Calafate, via the stunningly dull Rio Gallegos.
El Calafate is the trekking capital of southern Argentina with access to the northern Fitz Roy range, the enormous Perito Moreno Glacier and Chile´s Torres del Paine just over the border.
On our second day we headed off for the ´Big Ice´tour which is seven hours of trekking (with crampons, thankfully provided) on one of the world´s few stable advancing glaciers. The face of the glacier is an incredible set of ice spikes which keep falling off into the freezing water below. The glacier advances around 2m every day so there´s always stuff falling off. Add to this the amazing milky blue of the glacier water (something to do with refraction) and the blue-pink-white ice it makes a lasting impression. The trek on the glacier was excellent, although I did manage to break one of my crampons, with stunning sink holes created by rocks (as they´re darker they absorb the sunlight and melt their way to the bottom 70m plus down, making these bright blue holes filled with water - take a look at the photos!). Excellent day´s trekking in perfect weather.
The next day we decided to head to Torres del Paine and booked our buses, packed our waterproofs, popped into the supermarket for some pasta and sandwich soup (a bottle of wine - of course), kissed our lovely soft beds goodbye and headed off for four days of trekking and camping around the famous ´W´ route.
For me this was one of the highlights of the whole trip. We arrived in TDP and caught the catamaran to the far end of the ´W´circuit. Given that we had three days of trekking and three nights of camping we were unable to do the last part of the W to the glacier (but having just spent a day on one we weren´t bothered and from other trekker´s stories we made a good decision! TDP is made up of two spectacular valleys that have massive stone pillars between them. Ten hours of trekking on the first day (after a relaxed wake up in our tent) set the scene for the rest of our time there. Thankfully the weather was good to us and we only got drenched for a few hours on the first day. Otherwise it was an awesome three days, highly recommend it to anyone who comes this way as unmissable. The photos tell the rest of the story (and there are hundreds of them) - I´ll put them on smugmug very soon.
After Torres Del Paine we headed south to Ushuaia, the world´s southernmost city and the staging point for many Antarctica tours (which are a touch out of our budget range at $4,500 per person). We did our tour of the Beagle channel (named after Darwin´s ship) and are having a relaxing day, catching up on sleep and emails, etc after a horrible journey that involved crossing two borders (Chilean borders are stricter than most and take ages) but we got lots of passport stamps so worth it!
So, we´re heading to Buenos Aires tomorrow morning for some culture, sun, a trip to Uruguay, present shopping, tango shows, a Boca Juniors match and a touch of luxury (thanks to the AMREF girls!)
Our trip is coming to a close really quickly, only three weeks left which will see us head to Rio for the carnival (via Sao Paolo and a beach) before taking in Brasil´s Pantanal (the world´s biggest wetland for some more nature), the Iguazu Falls, a bit of Paraguay and then a week of beaches and surfing our way back to Rio to catch our flight home...
No comments:
Post a Comment