Keith's travelogue

Dear All,

I`m currently way down south in Patagonia, Argentina. Getting here from La Serena in Chile has been quite an adventure, and I´m glad I picked the type of tour I´m on, using big sturdy overland trucks as you will see ...

After La Serena, it was south to Santiago, which after the austere conditions of the Bolivian Altiplano and Chilean Atacama Desert, was a very welcome break. I stayed an extra day here to relax and visit a couple of the major cultural icons, the ice cream and coffee shops. This meant that I left the La Paz to Santiago truck, and moved over to the Santiago to Buenos Aires one. A different crew, and passengers. Some of the ones on the first truck slept all day and drank while played cards all night, so it seems odd as to why they wanted to travel through South AMerica, when they could do all that in the comfort of their own home.

The current group seems much better, more focussed on getting out and doing things as we found when we drve South to Pucon, in the Chilean Lake District. Here we went to climb an active volcano, Mt Villarica. After about 4 hours zig zagging up the ice covered mountainw e made it, and had about 45 minutes at the top to savour the view, and get gasssed by the emissions. Luckily no bubbling lava while we were there. Then on the way down we slid on our bums, and it was great funa s well as very fast, so we got down in under two hours.

After here we had to drive a relatively short distance to Bariloche in Argentina. To get there we drove voer a dirt road that was lined with monkey puzzle trees, so ity bought to ind some childhood memories of the one in the Ch-ch or Dunedin botanic gardens, and Mum telling the story of how it got its name. There were also lots of beech trees as we are getting further south all the time. After the high deserts of Peru, Bolivia and Chile it is eally good and relaxing to be amongst the forests again.

Bariloche is very Swiss in nature, so there were more ice crea and coffee shops as well as a very well developed chocolate industry. The Swiss influence is also present in the architectural style. In the winter this is the prime Argentinain ski-ing centre, and in the sumer it is a place of wonderful views across the lake to the snow covered mountains.

Then came the real hard slog, with two full days of driving (12-14 hours each day) down Route 40, at first paved, but then a dirt road from Bariloche to El Chaten which is in the heart of Patagonia. After we left Bariloche we headed east a bit, away from the mountains, and then south. The road went straight for what seemed like hours at a time. The landscape in this area is steppe, the famous Argentine Pampas grasslands, so there were very few trees and very little in the way of population, be they human or animal. We did see a heard of Rheas, related to the ostrich, and a few rabbits, lots of scavenger birds, six wrecked cars, but very little else.

We drove all day across this landscpe, stopping only for lunch and one service station for fuel. We then camped in the back of a service station so the two punctures we had that day were repaired. Then we were up at 6am to be on our way, again, only to have another couple of punctures which had to be fixed. We finally arrived at out hostel in El Chaten at 2am. Luckily we had beds, and I had the best 6 hours sleep I reckon I´ve had in ages, and woke feeling really refreshed to one of the best sunrises I have seen here. I organised my horse riding for the next day, and then went on a walk to a lovely waterfall in the afternoon, before having a great pizza meal that night. As we are so far south the sun sets around 10pm, and it´s light till later. It seems really odd walking home that late, after a meal out and it is still light enough to see by.

El Chaten, is home to the Fitz Roy Massif, a large piece of granite reaching 3405m into the sky, like a spearhead. It´s massive, so the name fits. The mountain is the highest in a range of about 10 similar pointy bits that reach up to the sky like the spires of some cathedrals. There is plenty of snow and ice, so it is no wonder there are so many glaciers here. Like Yosemite in California, this place is a magnet for rock climbing, but there are many places to do more mundane things, like taking a hike in the hills.

Yesterday I went horse riding to a place called Laguna De Los Tres. From there there was a steep climb of about 1 hour to reach a lookout at the base of the Fitz Roy. It was very spectacular and impressive, with a glacial lake in the front, and a glacier each side, with the spires reaching way up to the sky. The weather was kind, and it didn´t rain very much. There always seems to be a wind blowing down these parts though, as it is very near 50 degrees south (so way below Stewart Island).

Today I´m at a place called El Calafate, after a short four hour drive with no punctures, from El Chaten. Tomorrow we visit the Moreno Glacier. The glacier is part of The Glaciers Naitonal Park, a huge area of ice that is apprently the third biggest in the world after Antarctica and Greenland. So there! It is the other end of the National Park that the Fitzroy massif is in, and together with Torres Del Pine which I visit next week, are the main highlights of Patagonia. It is well worth the effort to get way down here, and get out and about in the nature. It is really remote, a road sging here says is is 10900km to Barcelona, and 10,000km to Sydney, and even Buenos Aires is 2915km away - that´s nearly the distance from Perth to Darwin from memory.

Well that´s about all for now so I´ll write again in a week or two.
Regards,
Keith