Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt, Puerto Varas and Chiloe

We boarded the Navimag ferry on January 30 and shared a cabin with Mike and Kat for a 4 night day ferry ride from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt.  The ferry goes through the Chilean fjords and islands, which are almost impossible to get to any other way.  It is a cargo ferry with room for 360 guests.  It was not anywhere near as nice as the MS Expedition but it was about a tenth the cost as well.  The food was fine and the views pretty nice.  We spent the time playing cards, having some beers, watching out the window and playing dancing bingo.  A pretty relaxing way to spend some time really.  Chilean Patagonia is much wetter than Argentina and is much greener as a result.  It reminded us a lot of coastal BC and the ferry from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert.  Pretty wild that we met someone who I had met in Tuktoyaktuk 7 years ago.  Her father used to work for the same company in Inuvik.  That was the second person from the north I´d bumped into in a week - on the trails in Torres del Paine we ran into a guy from Yellowknife I see at conferences and meetings from time to time.

Another glacier that produced some ice for our drinks at the bar...

...transported via this zodiac.

Elise and the Aussies on deck.

It is much greener in Chilean Patagonia than across the border.

Right away after getting to Puerto Montt the four of us took a bus to Puerto Varas.  It is a pretty, small city.  We toured the town a bit, took a bus into a nearby park where we saw some waterfalls and a lake surrounded by volcanoes, went whitewater rafting for a couple of hours (this time much better and warmer than near Mendoza, class III-IV - no pictures though) and caught the superbowl Chilean style.  In Chile it is still allowed to smoke in public places, includng all the bars, so we usually smelt like an ashtray when we came back to bed.  The aussies were not impressed with the game.

Falls on the Petrohue River near Puerto Varas.

The view of the Osorno volcanoe from Puerto Varas.

The four of us then rented a car in Puerto Varas and took off for a night to visit the island of Chiloe.  Chiloe is South America´s second biggest island (after Tierra del Fuego) with a different culture than Chile which is maintained.  We took a 30 minute ferry (saw lots of seals), had a traditional meal called ´Curanto´ (seafood, chicken, sausage and potatoes cooked under leaves in the ground), went to the coast to see Humboldt Penguins (not very close), stayed the night in a town called Castro (where we ate the biggest sandwhich I´ve ever seen) and spent the following day driving around to see various UN world heritage site churches.  All the while terrified because aussie Mike was driving on the wrong side of the road for the first time in his life.  The countryside again was really green with lots of fields of cows and nice farms.  It wasn´t the most exciting two days but was really pleasant.  After that Elise and I headed east back into Argentina to meet with a friend from Buenos Aires at his place in the mountains.  Mike and Kat headed north.  It was really great traveling with them, lots of fun.

That´s the biggest clam I´ve ever seen.

A UNESCO world heritage church, one of 16 on the island.

Traditional houses built to allow fishing boats to come right up at high tide.

 

Trekking in southern Patagonia

Shortly after returning to Ushuaia we headed on a bus with two Aussies (Mike and Kat) back to Rio Gallegos and then west to El Calafate.  We spent one quick night there - the hostel only had room in the storage room for us! - and next day went further north to the Parque Nacional de Los Glaciers and the town of El Chalten.  Mike and Kat stayed in El Calafate for a few days.  El Chalten is Argentina´s trekking capital and we were there during the high season.  It was the first time on our entire trip that we had to consider booking hostels and buses in advance, which we´ve had to do since.  The park was beautiful however.  We spent one night in an El Chalten hostel and next day started off on a 3 night trek through the park - just us and about 10,000 others.  The trails were like highways.  We spent one night in a tent city at a glacier lake at De Agostini.  We counted over 70 tents.  Despite all the people it was pretty quiet and clean and you can drink the water out of streams or rivers.  Next day we hiked over to another site called Poncenot where we stayed for two nights.  The weather had been typically gorgeous with no clouds and hot sun for weeks so we felt pretty confident of seeing the sunrise on Mount Fitzroy one morning.  We woke up at 4am and hiked up to a lookout with about 100 other people (the trail of headlamps on the mountainside was really cool) only to see the sunrise in total clouds.  Still beautiful, but we couldn´t see the big mountain.  The next day was clear skies, go figure.  I went on my own to a glacier lake early in the morning to have my breakfast.  I was there by myself for a while, until a young frenchman showed up and gave me sh*t for tossing rocks at a piece of ice - "you are destroying nature".  I called him ´papa´.  That day we hiked back to El Chalten, had beers and wine with two other aussies we met (Ben and Kerryn) and next day on down to El Calafate.

The lake at De Agostini, our first night in the park.  There are no entrance fees here...

...which means lots of people come.  

No mountain view behind us, but still a pretty nice sunrise at Poncenot.

Mike at a glacier lake just before being accosted by ´Papa´.

The town of El Calafate isn´t anything to write home about but the I Keu Ken hostel was great.  The main reason for visiting the town is to see the Perito Moreno glacier.  We rented a car and spent the day at the site.  If ever in Argentina it would be a real shame to not see this amazing place.  It is a huge glacier, some 7km wide and 25km long that is advancing at a rate of about 2m per day - one of the only glaciers in the world doing so, most are retreating.  The ice is about 60ft high and massive pieces regularly fall off making huge waves and noise.  If you stay long enough you can get a sense of where the next piece is going to fall from, which you wait for with great anticipation.  When it finally calves off your heart races a bit -

Sequence of a smaller piece falling.  Even the smallest piece of ice would make  huge sounds, like cannons.  Antarctica was amazing, but we didn´t see anything like this there.  

After meeting up with Mike and Kat again we went across the border into Chile to Puerto Natales, where again we stayed one night only and then straight into what the Lonely Planet describes as ´South America´s best managed national park´ at Torres del Paine (literally, ´Towers of Pain´ ha!).  Unfortunately in late December some idiot had illegally tried burning his toilet paper in 100km winds only to start a forest fire that burned about half the park (17,000 hectares).  We took a bus tour through some of the burn areas, where a chopper was still working putting out smaller fires, and then hiked for 4 days in areas where there was no fire.  Again it was packed and we didn´t really enjoy the park as much as in El Chalten.  And here we not only had to pay an entrance fee, we also had to pay to camp because somehow there is private land within the park.  I think the Lonely Planet should rethink its claim. We did see and hear pieces of ice falling off mountain tops in the French Valley and see a lake get pretty ripped up by incredible winds.  It was nice to camp but we´d had enough of the crowds by trek´s end.  We stayed three more nights in Puerto Natales at a great hostel (´The Tin House´) waiting until January 30 to board a 4 day ferry headed north to Puerto Montt in Chile.  Elise turned 33 on January 28.

You can see the Towers of Pain at middle-right.  Where it wasn´t burnt the park was beautiful...

...but much of it looked like this.

The winds were 80km/hr+.  Our tent was well protected but others weren´t so lucky.  Again there were lots of people.

Happy Birthday Elise!