I hate rushing through places. You miss a lot, you get tired, you don't really get a chance to fully know the place you are in, and you end up hitting up the "hot spots" which are invariably tourist filled. Last night I hung out with two Americans who spent a fair amount of time travelling through southern chile, specifically chiloe and northern patagonia. Their descriptions made me drool. If you look at map you'll understand why. The Chilean side of Patagonia is full of fjords, islands, mountains, and different varieties of forests. The Argentinian side is flat and pretty unvaried until you make it pretty far south. I decided that at the top of my "I don't want to have missed seeing this/doing this if I never come back here" was southern Patagonia, mainly torres del Paine and the perito moreno glacier in el calafate. But I have to go back to southern chile. I need to spend a week soaking up the verdant quiet of Patagonia. I need to kayak through the fjords and hike through the rainforest like parks of northern Patagonia. Consider this your invitation to start saving so you can come with me.
I was getting worried that Patagonia didn't like me. There was a storm on the southern, aka unpaved, portion of ruta 40 the night before I left bariloche. As our bus pulled into the tiny, nondescript, refreshingly untouristy town of perito moreno, where we were spending the night, we were informed that we might have to detour to ruta 3. The bus heading north from el chalten that day had detoured and they arrived in perito moreno at 6:30 in the morning rather than the scheduled 10pm. Sadly we detoured or, as we decided to call it, got an unexpected tour of half of argentina. Pull up map of Argentina. Find the town of bariloche. Follow the road that goes south until you hit a little town near the end called el chalten. That is what we were supposed to do. Now go back up to bariloche. Follow that road south until you hit perito moreno (it's where the road goes inland a little and then turns back towards chile) now from perito moreno follow the road that goes All The way to the Atlantic. Now follow the road all the way down the coast to rio gallegos. Now turn back inland towards chile. When you reach el calafate go north another 3 hours until you reach el chalten. That is what we did. 18 hours. In a bus without the comfy semi-cama seats long haul buses come equipped with. We arrived at 4:30am. Thankfully we made most of the "adventure" laughing about it, clapping when the obviously lost bus driver finally found the highway after driving around our lunch stop town for ten minutes, playing copious amounts of backgammon, and shrugging, saying "welcome to southern Argentina."
I was eager to explore El Chalten, the hiking capital of parque nacional Los glaciares and home to the amazing rock features Cerro torre and fitz roy. The area is notorious for shifting weather and clouds blocking the views it's famous for. There was sun when I hit the trail but it was long gone by the time I reached the Fitz Roy viewpoint. Fitz Roy was shrouded by grey clouds, but the blue of the glacier below it was still bright despite grey. I sat down to eat my sandwich and enjoy what I could see of the view. It started to rain. Half an hour later, my pants soaked, I turned around and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening playing games in the hostel.
When I woke up this morning it looked like it was cloudy but when I went outside it was crisp and clear with blue skies. I ended up doing the hike i'd planned for the day before, but in reverse. First I hiked up to the cerro torre viewpoint. The sun was still out and the views good. The clouds started rolling in but fitz Roy was still visible, though photography wise the wall of white behind it was uninspiring. Though the wind picked up for part of the hike it didn't rain, wasn't too cold, and at least I could actually see fitz roy!! The hile concluded with a local microbrew at a ceveceria and a delicious plate of ravioli. And the sun kept breaking through the clouds to momentarily dapple the hills around El Chalten with golden light. Patagonia doesn't hate me after all! Now I just need good weather in torres del Paine and for this cold I'm coming down with to go away and not get worse.
Final notes:
on my bus ride to El Calafate today we stopped at a hotel where butch Cassidy and the sundance kid hung out for a month after robbing a bank in rio gallegos Argentina.
I seem to have a knack for sitting on the wrong side of the bus as far as scenery watching is concerned.
No comments:
Post a Comment