It´s the End of the World As We Know It

Hello folks.

I´m currently sitting in an internet cafe in Puerto Natales, Chile. It´s a town that´s a stepping stone to the Torres del Paine National Park, famous for those photogenic mountain towers (Torres in Espanol) you tend to see representing all of Patagonia. Along with the Fitzroy range near El Chalten in Argentina, these are probably some of the most photographed mountains in South America. I´ll get back to the Torres in a bit.

First of all - Ushuaia!
The most southern city in the world. I´ve got a stamp in my passport to prove I was there (haven´t taken a picture of it yet) but I will do so for the next blog.

We got there pretty late after a fairly rubbish trip from Rio Gallegos on mainland Argentina. I say "mainland" because Ushuaia is actually on an island called Tierra del Fuego. "Land of Fire" in English. So called because when the Portuguese sailed past this part of the world in times of yore, the fire from the natives camps were clearly visible from the ships. Technically, the Tierra del Fuego, the southern most section of Patagonia (itself an awesome region of southern South America) is actually a group of islands, but the main one, known as Isla Grand de Tierra del Fuego is the one most people speak of when mentioning this region.
The bus trip involved a border crossing not once.. not twice... heck not even thrice. But four times. Yep. Once to get out of Argentina, then to get into Chile, then to get out of Chile, and back into Argentina. The reason being because Chile owns most of the area down here, and to get to Argentine Tierra del Fuego, you first have to go through Chile.

Anyway, it´s always had a rather mythical place in my mind, and I´ve wanted to come here for a while. The main city here (not in terms of population - that title goes to Rio Grande) is Ushuaia, and in the summer months, is THE main spot in the world to launch ships bound for Antarctica. Luckily, or unluckily (depending on my wallet and dreams respectively), we arrived after the end of the Antarctic season, so we were not able to go down there. Some of the last minute cheap berths are around $3-4k USD so I guess that might have been for the best! Otherwise the credit card would´ve been shaking that´s for sure! Ushuaia itself is set on the Beagle Channel, and is surrounded by high snowcapped peaks. Really beautiful.

We spent 5 days in Ushuaia, which we were assured was too long. But in fact, we could´ve stayed there a bit longer. There´s so much to do. We climbed a mountain right behind the city to see a glacier. Of course, the weather turned on us half way. You can see the fruits of our labour below.. REALLY horrid walking through this, and it got a lot worse, I assure you:

That´s me in the frame there

Another day, when the weather improved, we went to the Tierra del Fuego National Park and did a day hike with a really nice Welsh couple we met at our hostel, Jamie and Alexis. They are super friendly, and in fact, we will be hiking with them over the next few days here in Chile. But I´m jumping ahead of myself. On the hike, we saw incredible scenery, and I impressed everyone with my knowledge of raptors (Southern Crested Caracara!).. by impressed I mean bored of course. Jamie then had to show off with his knowledge of shrubs and trees and the like.. Cheers Jamie! ;)

We also then had the good fortune to go on a boat trip out of Ushuaia to see local seal and bird colonies. Pics below:

Boats around a Seal colony. Fur Seals and Sea Lions were here







And after 5 days, we left Ushuaia at a lovely time of 5am to catch a bus across to Puerto Natales, Chile, which involved two brder crossings, and two connections at Rio Grande and Punta Arenas.
We´ve now been here for a day, and tomorrow we will be going on a 5 day hike around the Torres del Paine. Wish us luck. It´s bloody freezing here at night!!

Anyway, sorry to keep this short. I´ll post more pics upon our return. Remember:
Smugmug galleries are there to check out.

One particular friend (no names mentioned!) had a whinge at me for not including more people shots. If you want, Fran has been doing more of those kinds of pics, and I can send the link to anyone interested. Just drop me a mail.

Gotta go. Much love all!
Adam

Spider Bites, Mr Mysterio, and the Lazarus Car

Right. Well it hasn´t been too long since my last update, but both a lot and not much has happened. I´ll get to the odd title in a bit, but first, on to Cordoba!

What was supposed to be a few days of trips around the area turned out to be rather tame. We took one trip to a town called Alta Gracia, from which you can do hikes around the mountains and check out one of Argentina´s (and presumably South America´s) numerous Che museums.

Taken at the Che Guevera museum

The museum was good.. and done thoroughly in half an hour. As we got to Alta Gracia late in the day, hikes were out of the question.
The rest of the time in Cordoba was pretty chilled out. It´s a nice place, but just like any European city, really. We met one Kiwi bloke who´d been staying at our hostel (Baluch Backpackers for those interested) for 3 weeks. And still had another week left. Now Cordoba is a nice place, but really. It´s not THAT nice. To each his own I guess. Crazy Kiwis.
The hostel itself was awesome. Really chilled out place, and they put on a free live acoustic show every Tuesdays, with free drinks. Can´t argue with that can you?!

Acoustic set by two locals at Baluch Backpackers

Anyway, not many pics from Cordoba. I got a little camera bored to be honest. I´m sure that won´t be the last time that happens this trip!

So after a few days taking it slow in Cordoba, we took a 22 hour bus ride to Puerto Madryn, which was founded by the Welsh some time in the past (and can I just interject my own commentary here and say that we were spoiled on our first bus ride from BA to Iguazu. Not that the subsequent bus trips have been bad per se, but they´ve become more crowded with more surly staff.. still, it´s given us laughs, and as ex-Navy-Seal-turned-chef Casey Ryback said.. "it´s an adventure".. or as the food additives genius Clark W Griswold said.. "It´s no longer a vacation. It´s a Quest. A Quest for Fun").
The bus journey wasn´t too bad actually. I got to see another absolutely brilliant sunset, with my iPod on, listening to some good tunes (thanks to DC Carver for Holden´s Sky Was Pink remix, and Lavelle´s Everything in it´s Right Place remix... and a bit of REM to close off the night. Waking up the next morning to a bit of Black Dahlia Murder´s Warborn. Great stuff).

Back to it; the main draw for P. Madryn is it´s wildlife and it´s location to UNESCO listed Península Valdés; a massive wildlife sancturay about an hour to the north. Famous for it´s oceanic wildlife (though not at the expense of the land-life.. they were still cool) which include colonies of Elephant Seals, Sea Lions, Penguins, Southern Right Whales, and Orcas. This is one of the few locations in the world where Orcas are known to surge up the beach to catch seals. Of course, it´s still a rare event, and we didn´t get to see it happen, but we heard it DID happen two days before we arrived. Awesome.
Anyway, to the south of P. Madryn lies a colony of Elephant Seals. We cycled to this spot - 17km in one direction, on sandy-gravel road and up and down some serious hills. That was a few days ago and I´m still aching from it all. Fran had been bitten by a spider in Cordoba and was cycling with a rather puffed up left hand. Luckily the spider wasn´t deadly or else my trip would´ve been cut short, and that would´ve been rather upsetting! Ha. Anyway, she was given medication for it which turned out to be rather fortuitous in more ways than one.. more on that in a bit.
Of course, with our luck, there were no seals after the grueling cycle. Or rather, we cycled right past the bay where they were supposedly basking. Sod´s law, really. So we slogged it back to town - another 17kms. Torture.

The next day we hired a car and drove to the Peninsula itself. First of all, in retrospect, we should´ve maybe thought the car hire through a bit. Not that there´s anything wrong with hiring a car to see this awesome place - it´s almost necessary due to the area´s size. It´s just that the car was falling apart and the group that used it the day prior to us had busted the fan belt, which was an omen of things to come.
So we drove along about 250km of gravel roads once inside the park, and saw all sorts of cool wildlife:

Guanaco

Magellanic Penguin

Rhea (very skittish)

Sea Lions

Big Hairy Armadillo (yes that´s it´s actual name!)

Distant clonony of Elephant Seals.

You could get right up close and personal with the Penguins. Of course, like most sea life, they stank to high heaven, but not as bad as some people on the London Underground. The highlight of my day though, was the VERY distant spotting of an Orca pod. This is what I mean by very distant:

Taken at full zoom on a Canon EF 100-400. The Orca is a speck, but even this tiny sight of an awesome creature was enough to make my day. If I hadn´t seen anything else that day, and just that Orca, I would´ve gone home very very happy

As the day progressed, the car became less and less reliable. It became harder to get the car to change gears, and at times I had to force the shift into 2nd or 3rd. By the end of the day, I could barely get it into 4th. The car would not start in 1st, but would chug along in 2nd only with a shedload of revving. We were staying overnight on the peninsula in the only town: Puerto Pirámides. We had planned to get up just after sunrise to make an early start so we could return the car at 9:30am. So I figured "leave the car until tomorrow, and see what happens".
Anyway, at around 5:30am, Fran came into my dorm (sex segregated at this hostel) and woke me to let me know that she had been bitten on the eye-lid during the night by a mosquito. It had swollen up pretty bad and was putting pressure on her eye ball. So we decided to hop in the car and get her to Puerto Madryn asap to see if there was anything the small hospital there could do to relieve the pressure. But the car was well and truly dead. The clutch might as well have not been there, as first, second, or third just wouldn´t take. Trying any or all of the tricks I´d learned the day before was next to useless. So we had to call the rental company, with our hostel in Puerto Madryn acting as a translator to get a mechanic out to fix the car. After the conversation, I thought to myself "guaranteed now that we´ve asked for help, if I start the car, it will work". So, in the words of President Thomas J Whitmore, I said "Hold on Command. I want another shot at it". Fran, worried I would be flooding the engine, said "Sir, I strongly recommend you disengage". Ignoring her, I turned the ignition.. "Eagle 1 Fox 3!". The car purred back to life, just like Lazarus.. who wasn´t a car, but the analogy stands.
So there we were. A car that suddenly shifted gears like silk, on our way back to Puerto Madryn. I was so relieved, being fairly worried they were going to charge us for a new gearbox or something. Upon arrival, the elderly and friendly car rental guy took the car for a spin around the block, and it worked flawlessly. "Mysterio" he says. He points at me and says "Mr Mysterio". I smile. It´s a cool name.

And back to the bite on Fran´s eye-lid. The medication she had been taking for the spider bite must have also helped her with the mosquito one, because within a few hours, she was on her way back to normal with no side-effects.

So that was the end of our time in Puerto Madryn, which turned out to be better than we expected. Loads of wildlife to see, in a pretty cool and relaxed place. I mean, with sunrises like this, how can anyone not love the place?

Sunrise in Puerto Madryn

Oh, and to anyone who is heading down this way - I recommend Hi! Patagonia Hostel in Puerto Madryn. Very chilled out, and the best one we´ve stayed at so far. Roy who works there is super super friendly and helpful, and the owner Gaston is full of life and laughs.

Right now, we are in Rio Gallegos, which hasn´t got too much going for it bar being a nexus point for buses down into Tierra del Fuego (Ushuaia), and El Calafate/El Chalten. We are just staying here overnight before an 8:30am departure to Ushuaia - the most southern city in the world!

Later folks!
Adam