Day 12-15: Los Glaciares, Patagonia, Argentina

On Monday, April 3, we drove to El Chalten, a small town just inside the northern end of Los Glaciares Park. For four days, we hiked in this area, staying two nights at a place just outside of town and two nights in town. Unfortunately, the weather during this time consisted mostly of rain and occasionally very high winds. Fortunately, these were the nights we were not camping. We never did see the main attractions of the park, a mountain named Fitz Roy and a rock spire called Torre, but we still had some great hikes and enjoyed the glaciers and mountains that were close enough to see and the beautiful fall colors. The second day was a bit of an adventure, but I will let Dee tell the story from her side. Here are a few pictures:

Day 10-11: Perito Moreno Glacier

On the first day of April, our group ended our stint of camping and drove across the wasteland between Chile and Argentina, crossing the border and landing in El Calafate, a town that has clearly flourished with the influx of tourists flocking to see the glaciers nearby. The most magnificent of these is Perito Moreno, a massive field of ice that is unlike anything we've ever seen. It is one of the few glaciers in the area that is not retreating, and it regularly calved large chunks of ice into the lake while we watched in awe. Hopefully, the pictures do it justice. On the 2nd, we took a tour that included an hour of walking on the glacier itself, followed by whiskey served over ancient glacial ice.

Day 5-9: Patagonia - Torres del Paine, Chile

Patagonia is best described with some adjectives and a lot of pictures. Adjectives: harsh, desolate, windy, rocky, icy, stunning, unique, brutal, glacial, beautiful, lonely, awesome. We did four great hikes in Torres del Paine, an incredibly beautiful park on the Chilean side. Though we experienced some ridiculously high winds and some clouds and rain, the weather was amazing and we got to see clearly all the sights on our itinerary.


Our first hike took us to an overlook of Glacier Grey, a huge and long glacier flowing from the Patagonian ice field into Lago Grey, a large mountain lake where you can find stunningly blue icebergs. The wind literally nearly knocked us over, but it was a great view to start the hiking trip.


Hike 2 was a strenuous and long one, the goal an overlook at the base of Los Cuernos (The Horns), craggy rock formations intruded by a bubble of magma long ago and later carved by glaciers to reveal the different strata. The weather began poorly, with hardly any view at all, but we arrived perfectly at the top as the clouds parted and revealed an amazing display of mountains and glaciers.


The third day was a shorter, four hour hike that was basically a transfer to our final campground but had some great views of glacial lakes and Los Cuernos from a different angle.


The last hike was another long day with a couple steep climbs, including a last push up a rocky old glocier moraine to the base of the spires that the region is named after, the Torres del Paine. When we reached the lake underneath the glacier, we had what was probably our most stunning view directly underneath the Torres.





And now, more pictures:

Day 3-4: Santiago

Saturday morning, we walked around the different squares in Mendoza to get another look at a great city. We would have loved to stay longer, but we had a bus to catch back to Santiago. This time, we took a big bus that was a bit more comfortable. There were even movies during the ride, though they were Walking Tall, starring The Rock and with Spanish subtitles, and The Longest Yard dubbed into Spanish.


We arrived just as it was getting dark, and during our cab ride to the hotel, we got our first real look at Santiago. From our cab ride from the airport to the bus station a couple days earlier, we though the city might be kind of a hole. Apparently, though, we just went through the less desirable suburbs. Now, we were suddenly in a large city amidst some great old architecture.

Sunday was the first day of our Patagonia tour. We met our group in the early afternoon and went on a city tour with a guide. It's always a little tough being in a city for a very short time, so I guess this was a good way to sample some of the different sights.

The highlights for me were some of the oldest buildings around the main square and a trip to Cerro Santa Lucia, a hill overlooking the city that gave us a good idea of how big the place is. Half of the population of Chile lives in and around Santiago. At night, we also got a taste of the good food in the newer part of Santiago. Dee and I joined one of our tour mates, Alex, for dinner at a place called Como Agua para Chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate).

Day 2 - Mendoza

We decided to rent bikes and check out some nearby wineries, so we found a rental place in town and took off for Maipu, a town a few miles away that has many of the bodegas, as they are known in these parts. Our first stop was La Rural, which we had heard has a great wine museum. It was a little further than we had expected, and we had to pull out the map a few times to navigate the countryside, which isn't nearly as developed or paved as our own version of wine country, but in the early afternoon, we were tasting some great wine. Our favorite was the Rutini Malbec, which is apparently sold in the US under the name Felipe Rutini Malbec, so go find it and give it a try.


Unfortunately, this Friday was some holiday in Mendoza, and the rest of the wineries we tried to visit were closed. After biking to two or three more places only to find that there was no wine waiting for us, we started the long trek home. It was good to get some exercise after days of sitting in planes and busses, but if we had known, we would have drunk more at the first place :) Almost everything outside Mendoza seemed to be closed, but we did find one place close to the city where we shared a large beer.


At night, we decided to walk to Azafran, a highly recommended restaurant in our guideboook. When we got there, they were temporarily full, but they had a tasting room where they said we could drink and wait for a table if it was ok with the people already inside. Fortunately for us, the people inside were three Canadians who were so much fun that we ended up spending the rest of the evening with them. David and Patrick had come to South America together from Toronto, and they had been in Mendoza tasting wine for a week. They had just met John that night in the same tasting room, and it just happened that he was from Toronto as well. He had actually been in South America for almost 6 months. We all hit it off right away and began sharing the many excellent wines that were stored all around this tasting room. Pretty soon, we were getting a little drunk and talking about everything from travel stories to climate change. The others had already eaten, but they let me and Dee eat in that room. The food, wine, and company were all excellent.


At some point late in the night, drunk and full, the five of us all headed back to the street we had been on the previous night. We ended up back at the same restaurant, this time drinking wine inside. David and Patrick were taking a plane to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuega early the next morning, but they weren't going to let that stop them. Dee and I finally left all three of our newfound friends around four in the morning as they got into a cab to go to a club in another part of town. We hope they had a great rest of the night.

Day 1 - Santiago, CL to Mendoza, AR

We arrived in Santiago on Thursday morning tired from the long trip, knowing we still had to drive 6 hours over the border to Mendoza, the wine region of Argentina. We got our bags, cleared customs no problem, and headed to the car rental agency. As he was filling out the form there, I mentioned that we were going into Argentina. Dee had read that they need to know and might charge you a little more, and I hadn't had a chance to mention it in the internet reservation I made. No es posible, he said. Why not? Well, we need special insurance to go into Argentina, and, in addition to costing a couple hundred dollars, they can't get it for several days. Our first travel snafu happened quickly. I tried a more reputable agency than the Advantage affiliate I had reserved with, but we got the same answer. We really wanted to go, so we decided we would try to take the bus. With our limited Spanish, we determined from information that we could take a bus to the main bus terminal and get a bus to Mendoza from there. It would take 7 hours, but they weren't clear on when the buses left. At the same time, some taxi guy was following us around trying to "help" us. At first, we tried to ignore him, but then he offered what we thought was a cheap ride to the airport, and the driver knew that a bus was leaving shortly. The 20 pesos turned out to mean 20,000, about $40, so the ride was anything but cheap (I hadn't done my research on the exchange rate, and Dee hadn't done the math to realize that they probably weren't offering a 4c ride). Getting fleeced didn't take us long either :). In any case, we did get to the bus station quickly and on a mini-bus leaving almost immediately, so we certainly got to Argentina more quickly than we would have if we had refused help.

Martin on the mini-bus to Mendoza

The ride to Mendoza was beautiful. The Andes are visible from everywhere here in Chile, and once we got out of the haze of the Santiago valley and into the mountains, we could see them in their full glory.

The road wound up to a pass at almost 10,000 feet, and you could see snow on many peaks. We were expedited through the border crossing and drove down the other side, arriving in Mendoza at about 6:30pm.

At the bus station, we smartly went to a tourist office and got a hostel, a map, and a bus ticket back for Saturday. It was really hot out as we arrived at the hostel, so, after relaxing in our double for a few minutes, we headed out in t-shirts to find dinner. Even though it was after 8 now, the restaurants were still pretty empty. I guess people here eat as late as they do in Spain. We walked down a great street with lots of restaurants and bars, all with outside seating, and chose a restaurant called El Palenque. After good food and good wine, and another bottle at a bar nearby, we walked home and collapsed happily in our bed.

Dee with a pinguino of wine

Off to South America

Dee and I are off to South America for the next 6 weeks. We had a pretty hectic morning finishing packing. Neither of us are sure we brought the right stuff, but it's too late to do anything about it now. We're in Dallas getting ready to board the flight to Santiago, Chile. Stay tuned for more....