Bahia Bustamante and getting to Ushuaia

After a lengthy stay in the Peninsula Valdez region (I think we were there for about 10 days) we headed south for a couple of hours across the never ending flat as a pancake steppe to get to a place called ´Bahia Bustamante´ (BB), which was described to us by one woman as the most beautiful place in all of Patagonia.  Needless to say we were pretty excited.  We were dropped off at a gas station at Garayalde (literally just a gas station, nothing else around!) wondering what would happen next - as BB is fairly isolated they only get email access when the generator is on in the evenings and we didn´t really know how, or if, we would be picked up.  No worries though as 20 minutes after being dropped off a blue pick up came around and took us to the place.  Bahia Bustamante is, well was, a town that was developed entirely for the purpose of harvesting algae for hair products.  It was built in the 1950s I think and at one time required about 150 workers.  The current owner´s grandfather started the whole thing and built an entire town to house the workers and their families.  The place had a general store, school, church and even and airstrip.  Nowadays most of the work is done by machines which means the workers quarters are not being used and the current owner is slowly developing a tourist business out of the town.  We were housed in a sort of dorm room (cheapest!) that we had to ourselves but most guests were in houses complete with bathrooms and amazing views of the ocean.  It sort of felt like being in another country - the land is enormous, some 210,000 acres that is used for sheep farming, all owned by the same fellow (the drive from the main highway to the beach is 36km long and is entirely within this property).  It is gorgeous, with crystal waters, nice beaches, interesting features and even a petrified forest back in the hills.  We spent three nights there and became a bit of a tourist attraction for the american guests because of where we live - we got a lot of mileage telling them about 24 sun and darkness!  We found out that the place had been featured in a New York Times article earlier this year and that was the reason most of the clients were from the USA.  During our visit we went on a boat tour to see more penguins and seal lions, chilled on the beach, visited the petrified forest and I read even more National Geographics.  Yes!  The weather was fantastic, the food delicious and the owner´s hospitality second to none.  What a great place.

This piece of wood is 65 million years old.  You can see the tree rings.

In Punta Tomba we saw them walking, at Bahia Bustamante we saw them swimming.

The owner getting the boat ready for a tour.

Old workers quarters.

The view from the main building.

After visiting BB we got back on an all night bus south to Rio Gallegos where we only stayed one night (not a very interesting place) and then an all day bus to get to Ushuaia, at the 'other end of the road' from Inuvik.  We had to cross into Chile and back into Argentina giving us lots of stamps in our passports.  During the Straits of Magellan crossing we saw dolphins.  What was fantastic however was finally seeing the countryside change from flat flat and more flat to snow capped mountains and forests.  We arrived in Ushuaia around 9pm and quickly went to our hostel - Antarctica Hostel - what a great hostel, probably the best one we've been in on the entire trip.  Ushuaia itself has a bit of a frontier feel but is way bigger than our end of the world at 60,000 people.  You can tell it has sort of been thrown up quickly.  The city sits right on the Beagle Channel surrounded by snowcapped mountains and looks at even bigger mountains in Chile. The main employers are the government (it is the capital of Tierra del Fuego province) and tourism.  There are gorgeous places to see around Ushuaia and it also acts as the main jumping off point for boats to Antarctica. We spent our first day looking for trips to Antarctica that are 'reasonably priced'.  A full price tour for 10 days (4 travel days) is about $10000 but it is possible to get much cheaper options as a 'last minute' option.  Well, the next day we were offered and bought a trip leaving on January 3rd coming back on the 12th.  I won't tell you the price because despite being a huge discount it is still horrendous.  That's what VISA is for though, right?  This purchase has certainly changed the budget for the next part of the trip but we figure it´s a once in a lifetime opportunity.  As a friend of mine is fond of saying it´s only money, go make some more!  Buying this trip however meant that we were going to be in Ushuaia for quite a while and needed things to do.  We visited beautiful Lago Esmarelda not too far from town  with a fantastic couple, he (Ed) from the UK and her (Elo) from France, both living in Paris.  The next day Elise and I went into Tierra del Fuego national park to camp for 3 nights and Elo and Ed came for the second night.  I have discovered that as Canadians we should all have a certain amount of national pride in the fact that we know how to camp.  Elo and Ed were amazed at all the tricks we knew, from gathering wood to cleaning dishes.  Hilarity ensued when a fox (that obviously was used to people feeding it, silly Argentines) came near our fire and we decided to leave the food in a tree.  The park, needless to say, is beautiful but lacks the end of the worldness that you would expect - tour buses come on paved roads, and it is littered with toilet paper even though each campsite has toilets that might be a maximum 5 minute walk away.

Finally - no more flat!

Elise, Ed and Elo at Lago Esmerelda. There is a glacier in the background.

View along the Beagle Channel at Tierra del Fuego National Park

Same.

Same again.  Not a bad place to camp eh?

We came back from camping in the park for two days promptly to leave again on a 5 day camping trip where we spent Christmas beside a mountain lake...

Puerto Madryn & Puerto Piramides - November 29 to December 8ish (Traduction a suivre - Elise se fait bronzer)

After a short trip in Viedma we came to Puerto Madryn, most famous for its access to the Peninsula Valdez and its incredible sea life.  One thing we´ve discovered about eastern Argentina is that it is very, very, very flat.  A soccer ball could roll all the way from Iguazu Falls to here along highway 3 without so much as encountering a mole hill.  And to be honest we were getting a little bored of the scenery.  And the scenery around here is more of the same shrubby, sheep filled flatness.  However, we would not have missed the trip.  We stayed in a really great hostel (La Tosca) in dorms with two kitchens a great vibe to hang out in the courtyard.  We met two Irish folks with whom we decided to rent a car for the next day´s travels. First to a colony of 500,000 penguins at Punto Tomba, where we had to wait for the animals to cross the trail right in front of us.  Their eggs were hatching so the chirp of little ones was everywhere. I find it really funny watching them walk.  It´s sort of ridiculous.  And think, some of these guys had to walk 1km from the ocean to their nests.  Mom and dad mate for life and take turns each year going out to sea to get food to regurgitate into their childrens´mouths.  They can be gone for 3 days at a time, traveling some 600km.  It was a gorgeous day and we found the site very well maintained (best bathrooms in Argentina!) and spent about 3 hours there walking the trails and watching the penguins do their thing.

What, never seen a penguin before?

Just another day at the beach.

They mate for life...

...to make eggs.

Us with our buddies, both Irish and Spheniscidae.

Later that same day we drove the rental car, a two door Fiat, on loose gravel roads some 180km to see elephant seals at Punto Ninfas.  The drive was super boring because of the usual scenery.  We started to get a little nervous after a couple of hours and no sign of, well, anything.  However we eventually saw a lighthouse in the distance and knew we were close.  We hit the reserve, with no entry fee or buildings, and found two camper vans where the occupants were getting ready for supper.  They told us to climb down the cliff and voila we were able to come within inches of a washed up baby whale (very sad) and dozens of enormous elephant seals.  The males, the ones with the elephant trunk, weren´t around - they just come for sex and then leave - but the females and young ones were either lounging on the gravel beach or playing in the water just in front.  It was a great way to spend 40 minutes and I could have spent longer but the sun was coming down.  These animals look so helpless on land, barely able to move and constantly sneezing and farting.  However in the water they would be pretty tough to take down.  We four sat in silence some 3 feet away from a monster female and thought about how lucky we were to be where we were with no other toursits on the beach.  After climbing back up the cliff (there were ropes, it wasn´t too hard at all) we spoke with the camper owners - two french families, one of whom traveling for a year with three children and the other on week number four of a four year trip with two children.  I think one year is ok, four will be tough on those kids.  They made nice cake, and gave us a place out of the wind to have our celebratory beers.  This was a fantastic day, made more fun for me as I did most of the gravel driving - reminded me of home and the Dempster Highway.  I was a little nervous taking the car back and we hadn´t said we would drive on any gravel, and we hammered that poor little Fiat, but the rental agency took one look at said we were good to go.

Unfortunately first we saw this dead baby right whale.  It might have been the result of a miscariage.  Poor thing.

They weren´t too bothered about our presence and couldn´t have done much on land even if they were...

...in the water would be another story however.

We could get even closer.

Too bad the light ran out so quick after we got there.

 A couple of days after that we headed by public bus to Puerto Piramides and wound up camping near the beach.  Puerto Piramides is home to about 500 people and is the main base for Right whale watching in the region.  Within two hours of being there we were on a zodiac with trip 225hp engines on it that was designed to hold 40 people but only 15 were on it under cloudless skies and hot sun.  The guide told us that we had to be patient, that the season was almost over and that if we found any whales they might not be so social.  Ten minutes later we were face to face with a 15m long mother and her 3 month old, 6m long, baby.  Seriously, the spray from their breathing got us wet.  The baby breached, the mother held her 5m wide tail tail up high.   They did all sorts of things.  There were some seagulls there that peck at the whales for food and apparently it is hugely painful for them - a lot of their acrobatics are designed to get rid of the birds.  Poor things.  I found myself a little short of breath seeing these enormous animals, that could easily have flipped the boat, come so close but with absolutely no menace in their movements.  There really is something special about seeing a whale up close.  We found another two pairs - again, the males come for some nooky and then split back to Antarctica (maybe we´ll see them later?) - one of which was very shy and kept dodging the boat and the other very social.  The social baby came right beside the boat and gave us a great view of its eye.  At one point both mother and baby were under the boat on their backs showing us their white bellies.  Elise and I both said if someone forced us to remember only one thing from our trip so far it would have been that experience.  Sadly after an hour and a half we had to come back to port.  That night we had a delicious seafood meal which I think has partially contributed to a pretty sore stomach now for me.

Safe to see some whales!

Darned seagulls, pecking at this baby.

 Supposedly they do this as a sort of sail.  The mothers also hide their babies from the seagulls under their tales.  A mother produces 200L of milk a day for the baby, which grows 2cm per day.  They only eat in Antarctica, some 5500km away.

This looks close, but Elise could have touched them at some points.

The ´exhaust´ is steam, not spray.

 The next day Elise was feeling a little under the weather so she stayed in town when I went for a hike along the coast just looking for something to find.  After heading up and down scrubby valleys for about an hour and a half I would up unexpectedly at another wildlife reserve and quickly heard all sorts of odd grunts and snorts.  Turns out I had come across a sea lion colony.  The viewing platform was about 50 feet up on a cliffside that overlooks rock platforms below.  I saw about 30 animals that included two very lively males fighting for eachother´s harem.  It was such a cool place I took Elise back the next day before our bus back to Puerto Madryn.  On our walk back along the beach we even saw a dolphin fin pop up a couple of times.  The only animal we ´missed´ seeing were orca whales, but we´re at the wrong time for that.  We met a nice young couple from France who we shared a ´parilla´with at the campground on our last night in Puerto Piramides.  Before Argentina they had spent 2.5 months traveling around the western USA just visiting national parks.  Sounded fantastic; they say the best parks are in Utah.

I stumbled on this.  Pretty nice.

This guy had to deal with two encroaching males on either side. Elise said it looked like a pretty stressful life.

They were very graceful, fast and agile in the water.

 

We saw a few fights like this one...

...but mainly ther life is this, tanning.

Now we are getting ready to head way south in Patagonia, eventually to Ushuaia.  It looks like we´ll have Christmas there, or if lucky, further south.

The Salar de Uyuni experience(oups, un oubli de la Bolivie)...Traduction à suivre!



Many people who come to Bolivia come just to go on the tour that is described here.  For four days Elise and I plus Sam and Kim (from Quebec) packed into a 4x4 jeep with our guide Sergio and our cook Santusa (both Bolivian) and saw some of the most incredible and diverse scenery somebody can experience.  It was absolutely gorgeous and we encourage everybody to head to this part of the world and do it.

The Salar de Uyuni is a massive salt flat, the largest one in the world, and is leftover from a gigantic inland sea that drained a long long long time ago.  Driving on the salt made me think of driving on ice - no bumps and pearl white.  The salt flat itself comprised only one day of the four.  We started in Tupiza and spent the next three days exploring Bolivia´s southwest before hitting the Salar itself.  This part of the world still has a wild west feel to it, only broken by the 70 or so jeeps a day that come through from Tupiza, Uyuni and Chile.  We recommend heading from Tupiza because it has the fewest tour companies and you get to see the scenery near the town itself.  Aside from lots of joking around, me brushing up on my french and us discovering a new game involving trading beans the trip was ultimately spent looking out the window of the jeep or taking pictures at the numerous spots we stopped.  The highlight for me was a 2 hour period on the second day where we saw a turquoise lake at 10,000ft with a volcano as the backdrop, hot springs, geysers and a red lake filled with flamingos.  Incredible.  Here is a selection of the some 42,543 photos we took during the four days. 

Ten minutes into the trip.

View while a flat was being fixed.

Chasing llamas.  Great fun...

...until they give you the stink-eye!

Elise in an abandoned village some 400 years old.  It was abandoned in the late 1980s because of tuberculosis.

One of the many volcanoes, dormant and active, that we saw on the trip.

COLD!  Water froze overnight.

First flamingo. 

At times it seemed like we were on a road to nowhere...

...until we came to places like this at Laguna Verde.

Sergio fixing something; Santusa looking at the camera.  She rarely went outside the car but made awesome food.

Typical of the second day.

At the geysers...  

...this was Mike´s favourite part of the trip.  Probably because he´s so full of hot air.  BLAHAHAHA! 

Two of the thousands of flamingos at Lago Colorado.

Elise loved the Valley de los Italianos

Us!

You can see the smoke coming off this active volcano.

Mike at sunrise on the flats.

A pre-incan skeleton found at a volcano next to the Salar.  According to our guide all of the stone fences in the area were built by pre-Incans because the Incans were ¨lazy¨.  Of course he´s making fun of his own ancestors!

Elise!  Don´t drive away - I need my shoe!

Like being on a giant sheet of ice...except its 30´C outside.

The tour ended in the city of Uyuni, which was an overpriced fairly boring place to be, but had this cool train cemetary.

This trip in itself is worth a visit to Bolivia.  I´ve never been to a more varied place than Bolivia, both the scenery and the people are so varied.  Just think that 5 days before this we were in the jungle!  We stayed in Uyuni for two more nights and didn´t know if we´d make it out to Potosi because of strikes in the neighbouring province that stopped all transportation for 24 hours.  However, we eventually were on our way.