Life in a Big Rig

Natalie and I are back in the Lakes District of Patagonia, after making our way back north via semi-truck and bus. After leaving Puerto Natales and receiving what turned out to be terrible advice, we spent the better part of a day, semi-stranded and hiking down a dusty, windy, gravel road, 21k from the nearest town in either direction, just outside the Argentinian border. Finally, a vehicle passed, taking us the final few kilometers to a small town. There, our fortunes turned (as they always seem to), and we were picked up by a long-haul trucker headed north. After about an hour with Carlos el Camionero (trucker), we decided to deviate from our original intended course and continue with him for 1.5 days. It turned out to be a fantastic descison, riding in style in his big rig, drinking maté by day and wine by night, accompanying a simple, shared dinner in the back of the empty semi-trailer, which would also become our home for the night. It was hard at first, but my comprehension of Castillano (Argentinian Spanish) improved immensely during the 21 hours of driving that lay ahead. He loved telling jokes (many at Natalie´s expense), but understanding Castillano, let alone GETTING a joke was very difficult. After much time with the dictionary, I even tried breaking out a few of mine, but telling a joke in another language turned out to be quite a challange--although Carlos was entertained none the less at my attempts.

Upon arriving at the city where we would stay and Carlos would continue north, back to his family, he insisted on driving us directly to the bus terminal. While this has been generally the standard here, as people are absolutely, astounding accomodating, driving his semi-trailer INTO the downtown of a big city and parallel parking it was way above and beyond. Carlos, we´ll try to remember and send you a jar of Mantequilla de Maní Americana (American peanut butter)!

We spent the last two days in El Bolsón, the Hippie mecca of Patagonia. They had an extremely unique and interesting crafts fair yesterday, which we spent the day purusing while resting--finally! Today, as I said, back in Bariloche, spending waaaaaaay too much time on the computer, applying for "real world" jobs upon our return. Tomorrow, we leave Argentina for the last time to explore the temperate rainforested island of Chiloé in Chile, beginning the last leg of the 10 or so days left in this wonderful continent of South America.

Adios,
Sam

PS. Natalie and posted and labeled the iceberg picture.

Blown, Wet and Happy

Back in Puerto Natales, Chile after a week of hard core trekking in Torres del Paine. Seriously, other trekkers were impressed- we averaged fifteen miles per day through the overall nastiest weather we´ve faced in South America. As the first day turned from cool and cloudy to pouring rain with a strong head wind ripping across the ten miles of grassy pampa, Sam and I both appreciated our Southeast Alaska conditioning. The next day, we took a local´s recommendation for a rest-day to hike up Valle Francais, and though we didn´t get the token valley vista due to cloud coverage, we did get to hear and see a chunk of glacier break and crash down a mountain, leaving a snowy cascade. Our origional plan was to take nine days for the trek, but after two cold days of solid rain, we decided we´d be happier eating more and sitting around camp less, so we replanned for longer, but fewer days. Of course, it was also that very night that the onset of the evil came, first to my body, a day later to Sam´s (possibly giardia?), so neither of us wanted to eat much for a couple days (very alarming behavior for the two of us!), and weren´t quite our usual, energetic selves, but we kept a quick pace through lenga (southern beech) forests and daisy fields, past turquois lakes and numerable glaciers, over rocky hills and the famous John Garner Pass. After the pass, we spent the day hiking alongside Glacier Grey, a shockingly massive electric blue plain, zebra-striped with crevasses, which is part of the third largest ice field in the world. That same day, I took a scary dip in a raging, swolen river, and Sam was almost blown off the side of a mountain, and instead into some prickly bushes, which came close to taking out his eye. Still, we laugh in the face of danger (and are very thankful for our well-being). The sun shone bright as we finished The Circuit last night, and all of this morning as we hiked out of the park, we had the clearest veiws of the magestic, jagged peaks and towers for which the park is named. Rain, a touch of snow, and southern Patagonia´s signature gale-force winds discouraged many of our photographic opertunities, and now Purto Natale´s computers, in general (we´ve tried several), are discouraging our photographic postings. Nothing, however, could discourage us from enjoying this amazingly unique, rugged, beautiful land! Now that I´ve exhausted most of my landscape adjectives, I leave you to help Sam with a post-trip barbeque. Tomorrow we´ll try to get a ride northward, headed now for weather that feels more like the summertime that they say it is down here. Being constantly surrounded by natural beauty on all these treks is getting overwhelming... We might need to consider taking a vacation....

They didn´t see us coming

And I didn´t see them either...at first. Five full plates of Asada (slow roasted beef), veggies, potatos, and salad, six dishes of dessert (had to try them all), three bowls of ice cream, and a bottle of wine. That is approximately what two skinny gringos can eat at a buffet after five days on trail food (and not quite enough at that)! Upon arriving in El Calafate, we´d been on three consecutive treks, with only buses or hitchhiking in between.

Our last trek was four days in Parque National de los Glaciars, outside El Chalten, which is the entry town for Mt. Fitz Roy and its surrounding astounding peaks. After this trek, we continued our lives as Mochileros (hitchhikers) to continue on to Calafate for the night, then continued on to Puerto Natales in Chile. So far, hitchhiking has been very good to us. While we often spend a couple of hours tyring to catch a ride, it has been the best way to meet Argentinians. When hitching out of Calafate, we were picked up with an Argentinian dancer from Buenos Aires by a trucker. Because there was a police checkpoint just out of town, we had to lie down in the trailer until passed. Once safely on our way, Natalie and I got to ride up front, sharing Maté prepared over a propane burner balanced delicately next to the gear shift. We rode with Jorgé for about two and a half hours, talking about anything besides politics (this rule was layed out at the beginning). He dropped us at nothing more than a truckstop in the middle of nowhere (well, southern patagonia actually), where we thought another ride that day was hopeless and had already scouted a gravel pit in which to pitch our tent where we weren´t likely to be bothered. Fortunately for us, the third car to pass in 2 hours was a man working in the Argentinian border town in which we needed to cross into Chile. As usual, he insisted on driving us to our exact destination. After easily crossing into Chile, we were picked up by a Chilean family returning from holiday. Crammed in the back seat of a truck with the grandfather, they drove us the final 25 km to Puerto Natales, where we have spent the last two nights, preparing for a 9 day trek in Torres del Paine National Park. I couldn´t understand a damn word the old man said, but he seemed to be entertained by every thought, none of which seemed to be questions, so it was safe to laugh along with him at every outburst--possibly at our expense :).

Now full of steak, mashed potatoes, grilled squash, red wine, and a bombero (chocolate ball with the consistency of a huge meatball), all prepared (except the bombero) loving in the rain by yours truly, we lay down for a southern hemisphere´s night sleep before again trusting our luck to the road and trail for our next leg of the journey...until next time...

Sam and Natalie (Viajeros sin dinero)

Patagonia!

I am extrememly happy to report that our lack of recent entries is due to the fact that the majority of our time in Argentina has so far been spent in the backcountry, and second on a bus (forty-two hours of straight bussing from La Quica (Argentia border) to Junin (central Agentina, known as the Lakes District), but the busses are much larger and more comfortable than those in Bolivia, and they serve wine with dinner, and "wiqui" afterwards, which Sam and I were delighted find out when served was whiskey. A much better blind order than the nipples in Peru. So the pictures that Sam is currently uploading were from Tupiza, our last stop in Bolivia, where we spent Chirstmas. We last left the blog just after crossing the border to Argentina, when we got on the never-ending busride, which ended in the delightful little town of Junin, which is very reminiscent of Driggs, Idaho, or some other tiny tourist town in the western U.S. Junin gave us a cozy, free spot to camp along a river, while we prepared for a trek in nearby Parque Nacional Lanin. From the park entrance to our trailhead was over 18 miles, but we were fortunate to walk only a third of that scenic, but dusty road before getting picked up by the two most fabulous Argentinians ever, Charly and Ale. After rearranging their road trip-packed car to make room for us, Charly passed us mate´ to share, and he and Ale engaged us in (mostly) Spanish conversation, which is different and a bit trickier in Argentina than Peru or Bolivia. They insisted on driving us all the way to our trailhead, which was past their campsite, but they wanted to check in and have lunch first. So we spent a lovely afternoon under a monkey-puzzle tree, beside a lake, eating trout and cherries among other delicious things that our new friends shared with us. (We had only cheese to share, but at least it was good cheese.) When they dropped us off at our trailhead, Ale and Charly offered us a ride back to San Martin after our trek, which we intended to take them up on after we hiked back from the hot springs in three days. However.... After a long trek through overgrown forests, which combined a two day trek into one, we got to the hot springs only to learn that they were now an expensive day spa. And there was no camping, as the Park Office had told us. So we hitched a ride to the nearest (7 miles) campground from an Adventure Race doctor, who told us about a two day trek through some amazing valleys, which started at the lake where we were camping and ended at the road to San Martin. Flying by the seat of our pants as usual, we took his directions (by memory) and followed the trail through a number of various environments, including lush forests of southern beech, bamboo, and monkey puzzle trees, dry savannahs, and expansive volcanic landscapes. When we got to San Martin that evening to find that free camping was impossible, we were forced to face the reality of returning to first-world living during the tourist season: it´s expensive! San Martin is a first class tourist town with fancy sidewalks and lots of shopping. Our hostel was the cheapest we could find, and still probably the nicest we´ve stayed in- at least you get what you pay for. The following night in Bariloche, a larger town that feels much more down to earth, we took our second hostel stay in Argentina in a tenth-story penthouse hostel, with a huge kitchen, a free food shelf that gave us two liters of beer, clean and quiet dorms, and a porch looking down on the lake and out to the mountains. Bariloche gets the prize for best city of the trip! Real supermarkets supplied us with meat, cheese, good bread, discounted navidad snacks and other trekking food we´d missed for the past two months. Well-stocked for four days in Parque Nacional Huapì, we hiked up and over rocky ridgelines, down talus slopes, through lush river valleys, and bathed every night in beautiful, serene streams and lakes. Exiting the backcountry this morning, with tickets for a thirty-six hour bus leaving tonight, we are loving Patagonia, and so excited to be seeing so much of it! We weren´t sure if it would be time- or economically feasible to visit Torres del Paine or Fitz Roy in Southern Patagonia, but we are making it happen! Blog posts may become increasingly less frequent, but that means mas tiempo en paraiso para los dos gringos!