Towers of Pain (Paine) & One Huge Chunk of Ice

Like a kid before Christmas, I was getting more and more excited as I caught my flight out of Ushuaia, heading to El Calafate.  The tourist center for Patagonia, El Calafate is the jumping off point for checking out the jewels of Patagonia’s national parks – the soaring granite spires of the Torres Del Paine and Mt. FitzRoy.  I was initially torn between which amazing place to see first, but following  the rave reviews from my kayaking companion back in Ushuaia, I figured I’d hike the Torres, then save Mt. FitzRoy to end my trip.

The only slight problem is that most of the tourists in town had the same idea, so the daily bus across the Chilean border was fully booked , and I was only able to get a spot two days later.

Right, so the good news was that El Calafate is more than just a transit stop.  It’s also the closest town to the mighty Puerto Moreno glacier – so I immediately booked a spot on a tour that promised an alternative to the standard “bus ‘em in, pick ‘em up” itinerary for most package tourists, and it didn’t disappoint. 

Leaving bright, yawn, and early @ 7am, we had a bonus early stop at Estancia Alice – one of the sprawling  ranches that eke out a living raising hardy sheep in Patagonia.

Isolated and miles from anywhere, I can only imagine what life must be like for the inhabitants in the winter.  Cold temperatures and howling winds that are only marginally slowed by the odd tree or goat, it would be brisk indeed.  Fortunately for us, we got a rare day of sun, and got to make friends with the local goats and guanacos – a local cousin to the llama.

Okay, so that was nice and all, but the ranch served as a mere appetizer for our actually seeing the glacier.  The tour promised to take us off the beaten path, and it lived up to its billing, as we stopped about 10 km away from the main tourist destination for a hike.  Winding down the hillsides and along the lake shore, we were treated to our first view of the distant glacier:

After the hike, we pulled into the main HQ, and I had a few hours to wander the labyrinth of wooden walkways facing the glacier across the water.  The perspective was daunting – there’s nothing like miles of ice looming above you to remind you of your tiny place in the world!

No matter how wide your lens is, it's never enough to capture the scale of the glacier... here's a panorama that does a bit better:  http://360.io/8r68fx

As glaciers go, Puerto Moreno is interesting for a number of reasons.  First, it’s big – really big.  It’s also one of the few glaciers that are actually still growing these days, and this growth leads to the coolest part.  The glacier moves along at a decidedly non-glacial pace for a looming hunk of compressed snow and ice - each day, it moves a blistering 2 meters, and this motion creates friction and stress at the front edge.

Yawn… so what does that mean for the tourist?  I was lucky enough to get to see this:

Returning to town, I stocked up on supplies for my upcoming backpacking trip.  Then, (cough) purely for, ah, health reasons to stock up on protein, I hit up a  restaurant with a genius concept - an all you can eat meat.  Genius – with lamb, chorizo, and lots of lomo (steak), and now fussing much with trivialities like bread or veggies, I waddled out two hours later and slowly ambled back to my hostel.

The next day, we rolled across the Chilean border after a surprisingly strict agricultural inspection – stiff fines were threatened if we had so much as an apple in our bags.  I stayed at Lili Patagonico's hostel – and got a world-class briefing of the hiking options for the park.

The main draw of the Torres Del Paine is hiking the “W” – a route that takes you up to the Torres Del Paine during the day, and then back around and up another valley, before finishing at a glacier.  I had to adjust it a bit due to time constraints – so could only do parts.

[Oh, and a quick word to Chile about your currency.  Just a modest proposal…  could y’all really take  off a few zeros?  With an exchange rate of 500 pesos to the dollar, your prices just sound absolutely ridiculous… ESPECIALLY as they also use the $ sign.  Talk about sticker shock to enter the park:

And ATM’s… every visit was a surprise math test, as I double and triple checked my conversion calculations – a misplaced decimal point could have meant severe pain to the bank account.]

At the trailhead, with tent, sleeping bag, and even a small flask of bourbon weighing me down, I started up the W.  A chance encounter with a nice couple from Seattle helped pass the time as we chatted, slogging up the consistently steep path before four hours brought me to my campsite at Camp Torres – complete with a bubbling alpine stream as a companion.

The Torres are tricky to see as a tourist – you’re often lucky to get even a glimpse of them without being hidden by clouds.  So, as the weather was still holding out for me - once my tent was up, I scrabbled up the steep paths leading up the final rocky slope.  Painful?  Sure.  But it turned out to be well worth it, when I got to see this:

My afternoon visit was good, but the overcast sky and constant wind-caused mini-avalanches made the summit a dusty and cold place to be.

The next morning was much, much better.  I followed some very good advice – I woke up at 4:45am and had a brief internal argument about the merits of sleeping in.  Fortunately, sleeping in lost – and coming out of the treeline, I got to see a beautiful sunrise.

The Torres were even better this time around.  I found a good spot down right by the water’s edge, and just enjoyed the slowly brightening view.  Once again, when it counted, Patagonia blessed me  with stunningly clear weather.

When the light finally broke across the Torres – it was stunning, as we few photographers sharing the view were treated to golden reflections reaching across the water, until finally the entire valley was bathed in golden sunlight.

Here’s a link to a panoramic view I took – just click and scroll to see the whole vista: http://360.io/NEvnES

Tempting as it was, I couldn’t stay there forever, so packed up and hit the trail back down.  I was looking at a 10 hour day altogether, and was happy indeed to see this sign announcing an "atajo" (shortcut) which promised to lop off an hour:

This part of the hike was a nice change – with none of the constant steam of day hikers, I had the trail mostly to myself.

Still, I was pretty happy to finally wind my way to the refugio (basic trail hostel).  Taking off my boots, indulging in a hot shower, and drinking first a beer, then several tasty pisco sours – life was good. 

Now, the idea was to leave early, and head up the valley at the middle part of the ‘W’ in the morning, in time to catch the 6pm ferry/bus combination to head back to Puerto Natales.  And truly, I did have that in mind setting off.  It wasn’t long though before I realized that my legs were still feeling the efforts of the last two days.  That, coupled with the arrival of rapidly worsening weather, and it wasn’t much of a struggle to change plans – and just find somewhere warm and dry.  So, from a “W”, I ended up doing a much easier “L”.

Four hours of trudging with intense wind-blown rain in my face, and I was more than happy to find myself changing clothes with a series of hot cappuccinos in hand.  True, I was a bit disappointed not to see the views of the other granite peaks in the park called the Cerros – but the valley was completely socked in by clouds, so at least I wouldn’t have seen much anyways.

I celebrated the end of the hike with a surprisingly tasty pizza at the traditional post-trail restaurant La Mesita Grande town, and the next morning, it was time to head back to El Calafate.  Getting off the bus, I took stock with a delicious local porter at my favourite stop - Borges y Alvarez Libro-Bar, before heading off to a lamb feast at the town’s famous parrilla called La Tablita.

Torres Del Paine – painful sure, but an amazing hiking destination.  Great weather and views meant I was a happy camper indeed.  Little did I know that my last stop of El Chalten would soon prove to be even better!

Reaching the End of Every Road in Ushuaia

Loud and brash, Buenos Aires was grand, but the whole reason for my trip was to leave the big city and head for the big mountains.  In Argentina, that means Patagonia – the huge region that encompasses the southern part of this vast country.

(Random trivia time – Argentina is the 8^th largest country in the world.  Coming from Luxembourg on the other side of the spectrum as the 6^th smallest, the sheer scale of the place takes some getting used to.)

Logistics-wise, actually having a job during this trip meant that I was able to hop on a 3 hour flight – instead of 72 hour bus ride.  Thank YOU Kabam!

Now, Buenos Aires was pretty fun, but overall, I still was feeling a bit let down by my trip.  I didn’t really click with BA; I’m not a partier, and with my fun luggage issues along with some examples of the locals being pretty pushy, it meant that I was still waiting to be completely in holiday mode.

And thankfully, Ushuaia came at the nick of time.   The southernmost town in the world, it is the jumping off point for trips to Antartica.  Surrounded by perpetually snow-capped mountains, it’s also a playground for anyone who loves being in nature – with hiking, trekking, and kayaking to boot.  Perfect.

My flight in was sketchy.  A three hour flight from Buenos Aires ended with our approach taken us between soaring mountain peaks, and then with a sharp right turn to the airfield.  The pilots on this run definitely earn their keep here – as gusty winds come swirling off the Beagle Channel and mountains – making even a routine landing… interesting, and a success prompted a wave of relieved applause.

I got sorted at a pretty cool hostel called Freestyle – with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the water – and then started planning my stay here.   This is where luck smiled on me – as while all of the daily tourist excursions were really tame (the most extreme water activity I found included a grand total of 45 minutes on a river in an inflatable canoe… yawn), I ended up finding an agency who had a customer looking to do more fun stuff.  Hiring a guide as a solo traveller is egregiously expensive, but with two people it actually works out.  So, I signed up for a full day kayaking trip as well as an ice hike, and then called it a day with a tasty locally brewed stout beer.

My first full day saw me hitting the trail at the Ushuaia National Park – a gorgeous expanse of forests, somewhat sheltered bays (well, as calm as Ushuaia’s winds allow!), and snow-capped mountains.  The coastal path was a great introduction, meandering around a peninsula and back into the local park headquarters, with stunning views of mountains at every turn.

One of the highlights of the hike had to be the naturally curious caracara that found me at lunch.  I was taking a break by the bay when a striking large bird of prey landed nearby and started scooting closer.  He wasn’t interested in the food, but just kept checking me and the other hikers out.  As a bonus, he even played nice for the camera:

Back in town, I followed the recommendation of the friendly girl at the travel agency – eating at Chiko’s – a locals-only place that served up a tasty Argentinean seafood stew alongside yet another nice glass of malbec.

After heading back to the hostel that night, I came to those defining turning points as a traveller.  Most backpackers go through a few distinct phases as they get older.  There’s the “save money at all costs” approach of the college student, who loves the thought of sharing a 12 person dorm room.  Most travellers migrate into steadily improving rooms – but still embrace the hostel concept, sharing rooms with others so they have more money for more important things… like beer.

But, eventually, most folks get tired of the inevitable pain and suffering sharing rooms with total strangers bring.  Every backpacker has their share of stories about horror roommates, and I’m no different.  Lovely Ushuaia took it to whole new level, and probably made me swear off shared rooms for good.

The reason?  I crashed at 11:30, only to awoken by an idiot turning the lights on to noisily browse his things before bed.  Fine.  That happens.  But at 2am, I woke up again to… uh… some overly affectionate activities by my two male roommates.

Seriously.

Let’s just say I was suitably inspired to vow never, never, EVER do the shared hostel thing.  Sheesh - an extra 20 Euros a night is well worth the peace of mind.

Annnnd, back to the fun stuff - the next day dawned bright and clear.  I met up with Marine, a cool French girl from Paris, and our kayaking guide Danny – and we headed out for a day of paddling on the Beagle Channel.

What an absolutely awesome day.  Sure, it was a butt-kicker, as my shoulders quickly informed me that a daily routine of mouse-clicking in the office wasn’t really training for this sort of thing.  But, aches and pains quickly faded to the background, as we got to explore a series of small islands in the bay.

Danny was a font of interesting information during lunch; we even compared notes as the Falklands issue.  Turns out he was a teenager in the Argentine army, and only avoided action due to his unit getting laid low by a nasty illness.  Danny was blunt - saying that it was almost criminal to send a poorly-trained force to the islands purely to keep the Argentine population distracted from domestic troubles.

Back on the water, we got lucky - the wind and waves were calm enough for Danny to let us risk paddling to an exposed island, home to a colony of sea lions.

Now, my experience with these guys had been limited to admiring them laze in the sun off Pier 39 in San Francisco.  Cute, sleek, and playful – your instinctive reaction was an “awww”…

That was vastly different to the feeling I got as we got closer to the island.  Our tiny kayak eventually got to about 30 feet away – and it was amazing to see the sea lions so close.  They started to get a little nervous and about a dozen came into the water – where we felt a whole lot more vulnerable in our tiny fiberglass boat. 

However, it was only when we saw one of the heavily maned, big, and fairly grumpy males start looking like he wanted to make our acquaintance up close in the water that we decided to call it a day. 

The rest of the trip was equally cool – we got swarmed by a huge flock of quarrelling seabirds, and had the chance to land on an island and hike up for the 360 degree views of the mountains around  Ushuaia.

The last leg of the trip was brutal.  We had to paddle in the face of strong afternoon winds and waves for about two hours to get back to town.  My shoulders had cooperated up to now, but they were definitely making their displeasure known (and felt!) – but like a Homer Simpon-esque champion, I kept powering on – fuelled by dreams of that first amazing taste of a post-paddle beer.  "Beer...", *paddle*, "beer!", *paddle*, and so on.

Marine and I teamed up for a hike the next day, as we took the trail up to Cerro Guanaco – a 900m peak in the national park.  As a bonus, we got to stop at the 'end of the road' - literally.  The Pan-American Highway, stretching from Alaska to Argentina over 10,000 miles, ended here... it really highlighted the feeling of being at the bottom of world.

On the trail, we again lucky with superb weather as we started out, and we headed up, up, and up the trail.  The views just kept getting better, especially as we passed from the forest to the exposed mountain slopes.

The plan was to eventually get to the summit – but the conditions didn’t cooperate.  The trail eventually trailed off into a 12” wide path of loose rock meandering across a sheer face.  Add in snow, ice, and more and more gusts of wind, and both Marine and I decided to play it safe – the last 50 meters from the summit were seriously dodgy – and one slip would mean a long and probably unhealthy exposure to the wonders of gravity.

Back at the base camp, we found out that the trail was actually marked closed for exactly those reason – whoops!

My last full day in Ushuaia was the most memorable, if also the most terrifying.  Marine and I had signed up for a full day guided hike up another summit – with the prospect (I thought) of a bit of snow-shoeing up the top.

No sweat I figured – a non-technical hike… I can handle that.

It was only as our guide unpacked our gear that I found out that instead of going up with snowshoes, we’d be climbing with crampons, rope, and ice axes.  For you children of the 80’s – my reaction was pretty much like Scooby-Doo spotting a ghost… “ruh-ro!”

But what the heck – I was committed, so figured I’d give it the ol’ college try.  Our hike took us through a mile of soggy peat bogs, then past a series of beaver dams.  It was pretty amazing seeing all of the changes a family of beavers can wreak on the land – the forest was a series of stumps, and half-gnawed logs.

That was fun – but it was time to start going up, and up, and up some more. 

By this point, we were only halfway up.  Another hour of climbing to the snow line, and we then put on the  crampons and hauled out the ice axes to start our ascent up.  The training was brief - "this is how you walk, and oh, if you slip, just fall down so that point of the axe digs in the snow."  I was never exactly sure how I'd pull this off instinctively if I started careening down the slope.  'course, our guide did have us secured by a rope as well, but let's just say that I was more than a bit antsy.

Fleeting thoughts of mortality aside, the views were absolutely stunning.  As we slowly inched our way up nearly vertical slopes, we got to take in vistas that took your breath away.  (Sorry, that took whatever breath I had as I wheezed my way up, one sloooow step at a time.)

And finally, just when I was thinking my burning muscles were about done, we reached the summit.

We were fortunate again - the wind died down to nothing, and the skies were crystal clear.  My big camera's battery died from the cold, but I got to use my iPhone's cool new app (360 Panorama) for, well, panoramic shots:

http://360.io/9qTLkC (you can move left and right to see the whole view)

Gorgeous.

Thankfully, gravity was our friend on the way down.  It WAS scary starting off - as the least experienced, I got to lead the three of us, with our guide bracing us at the rear.  That very first step - convincing yourself that walking from a flat surface back down a super steep slope was a good idea - was dicey.  On the plus side, the views were awesome - and we got to enjoy walking towards them with each step.  The minor bad news?  The rows of mountains stretching into the distance reminded me of exactly how much empty space was around, and how far it'd be if we slipped.  Yikes.

Six hours up, and four hours down - that was a long, yet absolutely fantastic day.  When we got back to down, we had surprisingly good tacos and a big glass of wine, and then I was absolutely dead to the world.  A nice sleep in, and I took a short flight over to El Calafate to start the 'main' part of my trip - Torres Del Paine and FitzRoy National Parks!