To travel is to experience new stuff isn’t it? I have wanted
to shave my head for a long time and this is how and where it happened. I
arrive in El Bolson at 5 in
the morning without having booked anything. What do I do in these cases? I
choose someone who has and I follow this person. Katja from Finland seems well organized and
has booked a bed in Casa del Arbol in the center. Christian from Germany and I
decide to wait with her until the hostel opens. Casa del Arbol, nice name, and
they have a bed and nice breakfast. I sit down to eat and Eyal appears, he was
the Israeli sleeping outside in Perito Moreno, without a tent. We start
chatting all together when I mention Durian (remember the strange fruit I
tasted in Singapore ?),
Paul hears it from the other side of the room and joins in the conversation.
Our little group is formed. Now we only need Anja to be complete. Anyways, we
chat and then Katja says she wants to shave her head. Then I say I want to
shave my head. We don’t hesitate long before we decide to do it together, tonight!
We need a shaving machine. Sergio, the owner of the hostel invites us for
dinner at his place where he has a shaver. This couldn’t be better! Eyal has a
shaved head too, he can be the hairdresser, Paul films the whole thing in HD
and Katja and myself are either victim or photographer, when we are not the one
being shaved. What a strange sensation not to have any hair left on my head… it
is all smooth and cold, as if someone put tigerbalm on my head. I cannot stop
touching it, I am fascinated by this new experience. How do I look without
hair? Well, now I see it, and so can you on the pictures in the link below.
12/04/2013
11/04/2013
Cueva de las Manos
I continue my trip alone, again, as Lionel has taken the
plane from Rio Gallegos back to Belgium .
I have some loooong bus rides in front of me. Then Anja suddenly appears in the
bus to Perito Moreno (the city) and the bus ride transforms into a pleasant
one! We decide to meet in El Bolsón three days later.
I plant my tent in the camping municipal for two days.
Perito Moreno is small and pleasant, but there is not so much to see there. I take the bus
to Los Antiguos for the day, visit the lakeside and some chacras (farms
producing jam, liquors, and other homemade products) while waiting for the real
reason I wanted to come here: La
Cueva de las Manos.
9000 years ago, original inhabitants of
the area decorated the walls of Rio Pintura with handprints, guanacos
(argentinian lamas), and geometrical figures. The prints were made
by blowing paint from their right hand with their mouth onto their left hand,
leaving a negative image of the hand on the rock. How interesting! There are
hundreds of paintings. Can you spot the foot of a nando (argentinian ostrich)
or a hand with 6 fingers?
El Chalten
Trekking in Chile
has opened our appetite. We are ready for some more. El Chalten offers us a
wide range of treks in another beautiful setting, different from what we have
seen before. The trees in this national park are amazing! We are not so lucky
with the weather; the clouds have decided to hide Mount Fitz Roy, at least for
the beginning of the day. We climb up a step slope for about an hour to reach
Laguna de los Tres. Turquoise water and more glaciers await us. Pity that there
are so many clouds though, but here is a photo taken by Anja the following day
so we can imagine how it looks bathed in sunlight… On our way down, the sky
suddenly clears up and Fitz Roy appears, majestically towering over the whole
area. We stop at a lake to bathe our sore feet before returning to El Chalten
and a delicious meal in a microbrewery. They serve little soups in home-made
ceramic cups and have a separate vegetarian menu.
We haven’t seen a glacier up close yet, so that is what we
want to do on our second day in El Chalten. Glacier Viedma can be reached by
bus, then by boat. A huge wave splashes over my camera, but fortunately it
survives. My truthful companion during this whole trip has seen it all, and has
been through worse than this. Our guide explains everything very carefully: how
the glacier brings all the dust and small rocks with it while advancing, which
gives the grayish color to the water and also makes the glacier look dirty. We
see the marks left by the glacier on the rocks, from when it covered more of
the land. Then we attach crampons to our shoes and we get to walk on the
glacier itself. How amazing are all the different ice formations? Here we see a
giant crack with little blue frozen drops everywhere; there we see a tunnel
through the ice. Some places the glacier seems like a landscape from a
different planet and then there is a slope that looks like a beach. The ice
twinkles like little stars. As a reward our guides serves us Bailey’s… on ice
of course!
El Calafate and Perito Moreno Glacier
Situated on the
shores of Lago Argentino, Calafate has the ideal location to visit the Perito
Moreno Glacier, 80 km
away. Perito Moreno is one of only advancing glaciers in South
America and it moves up to 2 meters every day,
calving huge iceblocks into the lake. 30 tourists died because they went too
close to the glacier. Therefore, we can now only see it from one of the many
metal platforms and catwalks constructed at a safe distance. Impressive! A
blanket of ice that carves its way between the mountains, digging out valleys
and leaving polished rock behind. The blue of the ice is so blue and we are
lucky, the sun decides to show up as well.
10/04/2013
Torres del Paine - Chile
Together with Anja
and Aurélien (from the mountain top), Lionel and I take the bus to Punta Arenas , for a short
stopover on our way to Puerto Natales. No time to visit penguins this time
unfortunately, a shame because the biggest colony of magellanic penguins is
near Punta Arenas .
This may seem strange, but I like leaving some things behind unseen. It gives
me a reason to return one day. On our way to Chile we see some playful dolphins
following our boat, jumping up and performing a whole show for us.
Puerto Natales is a
nice little town with the best hostel so far: Tin House. The owner knows
everything there is to know about trekking in Torres del Paine.and she helps us
prepare our trek for the following days. We decide on the W, and Anja is coming
with us the two first days. We are doing the trek from West to East.
On our first day we
first take a bus, then a catamaran to Paine Grande where we leave our bags. The
trek to the Grey Glacier is 11km each way so we have to walk fast if we want to
return before sunset. The landscape is amazing!. Announced by little floating
icebergs, the glacier appears in front of our eyes, nestled between hills and
trees, flowing down to the lake. Back in our camp we set up the tent, a
one-person tent, for two. Anja sleeps in the refugio. If I haven’t felt like a
sausage before, this is it. Backpacks, sleeping bags, arms and legs, other body
parts all stuffed into this tiny space. We manage to sleep though, so well that
Anja has to come and wake us the next day as the alarm didn’t go off.
On day two the
landscape changes again. Last year a tourist accidentally burned down half of
the national park, and now nature is trying to recuperate. We see many burned
down trees, but the grass has already grown back. In Valle del Frances, we get a
glimpse at the Torres, as we climb up in the middle of the W. For the next
nights we are still in tents, but in rented two-person tents. More comfortable!
Day three the landscape is again different, as we leave the burned area to the
greener and preserved part of the park. The sun is shining, the water is
turquoise and we are motivated. We stay as long as we can in the sun, enjoying
the scenery as we rest along the way. Last day. I have dreamt about sunrise
over the Torres, red light licking the mountains… Crushed was my dream when we
wake up at 5 in
the morning to pouring rain. There is no chance we will see anything today.
Even when we get up, some hours later, the clouds lay as lids over the valley.
Hopefully we will get better weather on our next trek.
Ushuaia
It is time for me
to go to the airport to pick up Lionel and together take the next plane…to
Ushuaia, the end of the world. I am not sure why, but Ushuaia attracts me like
a magnet. Maybe it is because it is also the gateway to Antarctica ,
one of my dream destinations. But not this time. We stroll around in and around
town the first day; it is quite cold and windy. Nice little town though, on the
bank of the Beagle Channel. On the second day we go trekking in the Parque
National Tierra del Fuego. We choose the most difficult one. Maybe a little bit
too much for a first trek? Anyway, it was well worth it. After ascending almost
1000 meters
(!) we discover the most beautiful 360° view over the surrounding landscape;
the Beagle Channel, lakes, mountains. A mountain fox decides to join us for
lunch and even poses on our photos. My camera batteries have run out but
luckily Aurélien is there to capture the moment.
You cannot go to
Ushuaia and not see the penguins. We book a tour to Isla de Martillo, with
Anja, who arrived the day before. On our way to Harberton we make a stop to
admire the trees bent by the wind. For some of them I even wonder how they
still stand. There are two big colonies of penguins on the island, one type is
are quite small with black beaks. The other type is bigger and has more colors
like a orange beaks and feet. These penguins live and breed here. Baby penguins
get big quickly but you can still see they are babies because of the fluffy fur
they have. Some even look like they are wearing a coat. I could stay for days
watching the penguins, they have such funny behavior. Vamos a ver penguinos is
not so far from vamos a ser penguinos… We waddle around a little and say
goodbye to the end of the world, ready for new adventures.
Buenos Aires
On the 24th of
February I am supposed to take the plane to London ,
then to Buenos Aires .
Except it doesn’t quite happen like that. I get on the first plane alright, then
we sit for more than an hour in the plane, waiting for who knows what, and when
we finally take off, I am almost certain I will miss the second plane in
London. I do. Luckily, British Airways is a good airline and compensates this
minor delay in my trip by giving me a lot of meal vouchers and allocating me in
a nice hotel with steam bath, but no WIFI. Here, I spend my day eating at the
hotel’s nice buffets with Janet, from Ireland ,
and sleeping, getting ready for Argentina !
At the airport in Buenos Aires , I meet Anja, from Germany , and something just clicks.
Little did I know then that we would spend the next two and a half weeks
chasing each other in Patagonia … Juan welcomes
me at the bus station with detailed instructions on how to get to his apartment
and a giant smile, and he is fluent in German! When will I get to practice my
Spanish with all these German-speaking people around? After a nice shower I
head into town. The bus drives through Palermo ,
leaving me in the Recoleta Barrio (neighborhood) where I want to visit the
famous cemetery where Eva Peron (Evita), among other illustrious personalities,
is buried. The place is magical with huge crypts, rusty locks and spider webs
adding some mystery to it. Who were all these people? What were their lives like?
Why were they buried here? I let my imagination run wild.
On my second day,
the plan is to go to la Boca ,
another famous barrio in Buenos Aires ,
where most of the immigrants first settled; those Italians who used to work in
the meat factories, filling tin boxes for exportation. I pick up Anja from her
hostel in San Telmo, famous for its tango bars (milongas). We spend the whole
day strolling around in la Boca ,
el Caminito, with its colored houses and artists selling their works in the
street. Then we get hungry and decide on a restaurant with a show. Anja wants
to try some tango on the scene of the restaurant. She undergoes a total
transformation. From a girl with backpacker look she changes into the most
elegant tango dancer, en-lacing her partner to the rhythm of the seductive
music. When they finish, everyone cheers, they probably thought she was part of
the show…
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