It’s boxing day here in Henley-in-Arden and we had a massive feast once again. Left over turkey from yesterday also came into play but the Gammon was the centre piece of our feast this evening.
In the morning we had a visit from B’s relative’s the Bentleys.. Awesome, time, the kids had a Nintendo DS so I was having a go, I want one now…
The girls went for a late afternoon stroll through the countryside while I stayed home and slept. The afternoon was very nice but freezing, it think it was about 1 degree outside. The sunset was quite nice too, with clear skies all round.
The Christmas weekend here in Henley has been the best time. I think everyone ate enough to get them through to next Christmas, with plenty more left. We didn’t really do much else but eat sleep and drink while being out here in the countryside, which was great. I was in my PJ's all day today, just to be in the spirit of Christmas.
We played Cluedo tonight before and after we ate dinner. We all found out how much of a gun Janice is at Cluedo winning all the games.
It will be sad to leave the country side tomorrow, but it was a successful and great Christmas.
So I thought I would sign out from the country with some classical Mozart with my own little twist..
Can someone please explain to me what El means in El Chalten? We seem to be in El country, everything around here seems to be El something or a rather. Wait B just told me it means 'The'.... :-)
Must really try and learn some Spanish :-)
Well after a day spent at the Perito Moreno Glacier our Patagonian Express tour continued onto to El Chalten and its magnificent mountains.
We took the evening bus from El Calafate, we rode Cootra again, okay bus line. The bus we where on today was real sweet, with new LCD screens and a DVD that played DVD's all the way through to the end. Travelling on South American busses, its as much about the scenery as it is about the DVD player. One 20 hour bus ride with a stuffed DVD player can really fck you up... hehehehe But really you need a good DVD player on the bus, I would even go as far as saying it's more important than leg room...
We pulled into El Chalten at about 10 pm, its about a 4 hour bus ride form one town to the next, it would probably be shorter if there wasn't a massive lake between the two towns. The lake is being fed by this massive glacier, I think called Glacier Viedma??? Will have to check that. So all roads must go around the lake.
The drive in is generally boring, the landscape is baron with horses and sheep running around the place like where in New Zealand or something a rather. We did make a random pit stop at some poor persons house by the looks of things where we were allowed to get out and stretch our legs. The movie playing on the bus wasn't paused so me and B both stayed on not wanting to miss a critical part of the movie. hehehehe
So, the drive is generally boring but then you take a left turn and suddenly in the far off background Mt. Fitz roy, Glacier Viedma, Cerro Torre and the rest of the amazing mountain range just come out of no where to totally blow your fricken mind away with its Magnificent Awe inspiring presence. Suddenly, the movie takes a back seat and the setting sun over the mountain ranges takes centre stage, everyone is awake and trigger happy with the camera's even though we are still a good hour and a half away from the town....
This of course includes me and B, over excited about seeing a mountain we have seen in so many postcards we take our fair share of photos also of the mountains from far away :-)
The hostel we stayed at was very nice, it's called Aleyen Aike, or something like that. The owner of the small hostel came to the bus stop to pick us up, EL Chalten is so small we could have walked but it was nice of him to come get us :-)
When we saw we where staying it was 10 bed dorm room with 6 Israelis, 1 irish, 1 german and now 2 aussies, us!!! like I said, Israelis are everywhere in south america. We were worried about not getting any sleep, but being exhausted and one night time cold and flu tablet sure helped us get through the night without any problems. I slept so well the snoring 60 year old German on the lower bunk didnt even bother me :-)
Day 2 - We slept in, today was a big day we had decided to do the big hike to the Laguna at the base of Mt. Fitz roy. 5 hours each way, with a steep final climb at the end before reaching the Mirador. Our expectations where similar to the Torres Del Paine hikes, tough, steep, river crossings and steep mountain climbs requiring goat like foot work to get to the top... But luckily for us, its not what we got.. Wooo Hooo... 80% of the walk was really easy (easy relative to the hikes we have just completed at Torres Del Paine), it was such a leisurely walk that at one stage I said, that the walk could be done in CROCS... hehehe. The steep mountain climb at the end was the toughest part of the hike as predicted. The walk only took us 3 hours instead of the estimated 5 hours.
When we reached the top of the Mirador the views where spectacular, El Chalten had given us a beautiful day to be on top. Clear blue skies, melting snow and glaciers, no wind and 360 degree panoramas of everything.... hehehe glorious day on the mountain... hehehe...
We stayed at the Mirador for about 4 hours, playing in the snow, climbing rocks and taking picture after picture after picture of the mountain, the lake the snow, the people and everything and anything else that was there.
I did a real cool 360 photo of B looking at Mt. Fitz roy that I have put into a small movie clip. Awesome footage.. he he he
The rest of the day we just took in the fresh mountain air, drank the clearest and yummiest water fresh of the glacier and worked on our sun tan.. Truly, a beautiful day at the mountain...
Day 3 - I had promised my self that I would wake up early in the morning and watch the sunrise... 4 am came and I kept sleeping. 4:30 came and I was like, last chance to run up the mountain and catch the sunrise. I was told that the sun hit the mountain at about 530 am, the walk up to the Mirador with B was about one hour and 20 minutes, so I knew I could do it in an hour or less. Got up to the Mirador at 5:20.... gunned it up the hill, it was huge!!! I was so buggered by the time I got up there I nearly fainted. It was cold but because I was running I was all sweaty and wet. Thinking I would be the only idiot at the Mirador to see the sunrise, I was sorely disappointed. There was one other couple at the Mirador and they had gotten there 10 minutes before me.... Germans!!!!
Nice couple, they saw that I was huffing and puffing and they offered me a drink of water from there drink bottle.. Thanks guys... I settled in and started taking photos. I wanted to get a time lapse of the sunrise over the mountain. It was a beautiful morning so I was in for a treat...
400 plus photos later we got our time lapse... Wooo Hoooo and it looks real cool...
The sunrise was well worth the run up to the mountain Mirador... It was a beautiful day......
he he he he.....
The rest of the day, we where stuffed from yesterday's walk so we did a small trail called Mirador dos Condorres and watched videos at the hostel waiting for our bus to take us back to El Calafate....
El Chalten was a great place to hangout and see the beauty of Patagonia!!!
Peace
Taking the bus out of Puerto Natales, Chile in to El Calafate, Argentina was pretty easy. Puerto Natales is a small town, easily walkable, but after Torres Del Paine walking was the last thing on our minds. The bus line we caught was called Cootra, 11,000 Chilean Pesos each one way. The conversion is about 400 pesos to the Aussie dollar and the bus ride was about 6 hours in total, this includes the border crossing.
This is our third border crossing between Argentina and Chile with more to come in the coming weeks. So our passports should be filled with stamps from the two neighbouring Andean nations.
The border crossing went well, we where greeted with a huge sign on the Chilean side saying don't bring oranges and a slice of beef into Chile. What if I have an apple, can I bring that? he he he.
The bus ride went pretty smoothly with most of the roads being asphalt, but there where times when the road turned gravel and it got you thinking whether you were actually on a bus headed for Wolfe Creek, instead of El Calafate, but none the less we made it into El Calafate safely.
We had no accommodation booked but our friends Bernie and Mark had mentioned the hostel name of where they had stayed at when they where in El Calafate, so we where hoping to find the same hostel at the bus station. The povo accommodation system works the same way here as it does in Dubrovnik, you rock up at the bus terminal and someone's grand mother will be there to meet you with room options :-)
The hostel we were looking for was called Hostel Los Nina's. From the bus we spotted a man with a sign showing the hostel name and hooked us up.
We have been staying in private accommodations to accommodate Bernadette's bowl movements so it's a bit pricey, but hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go!!
Typically, though a bed in a dorm would cost 40 pesos (20 dollar ozzie) the conversion is about 2 pesos to 1 ozzie dollar.
We arrived late in the evening so, we only had time to get some food at the grocery store for dinner and organise our hire car for seeing El Calafate's No. 1 draw card, the Perito Merino Glacier. Talking to fellow travellers that had already been to El Calafate, we were told that the best thing to do is rent a car and go to the glacier early in to morning to miss the thousands of retire's on tour busses wanting a piece of the action. By doing so you would also skip on paying the entrance fee which is not included on the tour packages that you go on.
So that was our plan. The rental car came to 230 pesos from Nunatuk Car Hire and which was pretty good seeing as though tours where 110 pesos each. So we made a saving on renting the car and going in early in the morning....
The travellers where right, we left the hostel about 5ish and got there about 6ish, the place was empty with only three other hire cars in the parking lot. We were so tired from not having gotten that much sleep that we napped in the car for about an hour. What Berna has come to call a 'mini nap' hehehehe...
Driven by the noises coming from my stomach, we got got up and started to head down to the viewing platforms...
When we arrived we saw two groups of travelling Israeli's having warm cups of coffee. When travelling though Brasil and Pategonia, Israli's are like Kangaroos in the outback, there everywhere :-) The travel in packs, groups of four or more.... It wasn't any different here....
We spent a good couple of hours walking around the glacier, it was good, in reality we where pretty BORED! There's nothing much to do at the glacier and there's only so many photo's you can take of the damn thing. Even Berna was over taking photo's of the bad boy!! There were also other complications at play that, I'll let Bernadette talk to you guys about :-)
We decided to leave and go back to the hostel early, the time was only 1030 am. Just about the same time the tour buses started to arrive, so it was a good time to get out!
Driving out of the park we decided to go exploring, we found some cool spots to take photo's of the glacier, so we did!!! hehehe Then out of nowhere, Berna snaps these awesome shots of a piece of a glacier falling into the the Lake!!!!! Awesome stuff... She didn't have the camera in continuous mode so she had to snap the photo's manually... Great shots though!!!...Go B!!
We continues exploring the park areas until we made it down to the northern side of the glacier where we saw a bout that took people out to the glacier.
This is when the day got really exciting, we had lunch first on the shores of the lake, the usual tuna, bread, fruit.
Then Berna went nuts with the camera when she found glacier ice washed up on the shores, the photos she took are AWESOME!!!!!
We took the boat cruise to the face of the glacier. It was great!! The north face of the glacier is about 2.8 km wide and 15 storeys high, with chucks constantly falling into the lake. This galcier is different from the other glaciers that we have seen on our trip as it is a stable glacier. At the centre of the glacier it advances 2 meters per day and the edges advances 40 cm per day... So it's AAAALLLLLLIIIIVVVVEEEEE!!!! hehehehe
A Beautiful glacier!!!
After taking awesome photo's we headed back into town. We returned the car, bought bus tickets for El Chalten, bough more food, packed our over night bags, ate last nights left over spaghetti, and got on the bus for El Chalten!!!
Perito was great, but a little boring, would definitely recommend against taking a tour, renting a car is the best way to go!!!!
Oh and sunrise is sht on the glacier so not really worth getting up for the sunrise!!!
My mental strength is elevating to new and higher thresholds, my eyes burning from the expired daily contacts that I was using, my shoulders feel like two guillotines have sliced right through the shoulder joint to separate my arms from my body, my lower back muscles are strained to the elastic limits, my upper thigh muscles can no longer contract due to the large amount of lactic acid build up in them with my calf muscles soon to follow, both my ankles feel like the tendons and ligaments have been individually torn from the muscle fibres and bones, and my feet feel like each foot bone has been smashed into a million pieces by a sledge hammer.
And were only on the first hill! Welcome to Torres Del PAINe National Park, Chile.
Welcome to Torres Del Paine National Park, Chiles most fricken expensive and magnificent national parks!
The 'W' circuit
This is one of the most dramatic and spectacular national parks I have ever been too. Some may disagree but man, this place is truly amazing and a must on any travellers itinerary through South America. The mountains are so eye catching and spectacular that one can only stare in wonder.
We camped for 4 days and 3 nights and completed 2/3 of the W with the main highlights being the Mirador Las Torres and the French Valley. But all in all every painful step was a highlight. During the 4 day trek you are constantly surrounded by 360 degrees of pristine southern Patagonian landscapes that constantly change with the ever moving cloud formation. With the cloud formations and position of the sun dictating the colours of the land, Torres Del Paine is a place where you just don't want to blink your eyes in fear of missing something wonderful quickly appearing then fading away just as quick into the sky.
On the last day of our trek I got to witness something so simple yet so amazing that it completely blew my mind to see it. As we were rounding the Cerro Paine Grande I looked up at the heavens and saw that small soft white clouds where being formed from the snow that was still on the peak of the mountain. It was a crystal clear blue day and seeing this occur was AWESOME!!!
The W is 76 km's long and we did about 44 km's. Tough walks, but at the same time very rewarding.
The trekking was difficult to say the least, especially when me and B have never done a trekking expedition as large as this one before. We got to go camping for the first time in our whole trip. In America we slept in our rental car, that was about as close to camping as we got.
So let's break this trip down.....
DAY 1
Here we go, we rented a tent and a thicker sleeping bag for B from our hostel. Looking back on it now I wish I had rented a sleeping bag too. Instead of taking both our sleeping bags hoping it would be enough to keep me warm at night. We also bought these cool headlamps from a camping store in town, this for me was the highlight.. Headlamps, how cool!!! I couldn't wait to use them on the trip.
We went to the grocery store and bought supplies for the trip, ravioli, 2 minute noodles, tang, coffee, tuna and biscuits.
We paid for our bus tickets, entrance fee to the national park and we were off!! Here we come Torres Del Paine.
Half way to the National Park a brainwave hits me, 'Leover you idiot, you left your contacts and glasses back at the hostel' this brainwave was then followed by 'you idiot Stimpy' then it was followed by 'oh my god, I have no eyes for the next 4 days, I'm screwed'.
So, for the entire time I was in the park I had one pair of contacts that were daily disposables. To make life more interesting I had no contact holders and contact solution. I had to reuse my contacts and keep them in a small bowl with water during the night. This was the toughest task ever and by the 4th day my eyes were on fiyaaaaaa.....
The first trek was the toughest, the map showed the hike to be a 2 hour hike, it took us three and a half. The first 2 hours was all up hill with switchback turns every 200 to 300 metres. From the beginning of the walk the snow line looked a million miles away two hours later, you were practically walking in it!
When I looked back at where we had come from the thought came to my head, 'man that's high'
Poor B was struggling, hell we were all struggling to climb this huge mountain, there where times where I wanted to cry like a little baby and give up, but I just couldn't this was a test and I was going to pass it otherwise I was going to die on this mountain and I didn't want to do that.
We walked from Hosteria Las Torres to Campamento Chileno and set up camp there for the night. From the camp you could see the tops of the Torre Norte and Torre Central.
Setting up the tent was so much fun, I had never done it before so I looked like a complete dick. We arrived late at camp so everyone had already set there tents up and it was a battle just to find a spot for the tent.
Luckily for us, we had befriended a lovely couple of Aussie's from Brisbane who we now love. Bernadette and Mark.. Yup, that's right I was trekking with two Bernadette's!! What the??? The similarities between the two are ridiculous.... so here goes.
They both have the same name, they both have 7 kids in there family, 4 of the family members have the same names, Michael, John, Mary and Anne, they both had tooth issues at the same times, they are both short and catholic, they both talk about there bowls a lot, they both want to write a book, they both have the Bernadette Exaggeration Factor or what Michael Kennedy like's to call as (BEF) and they both walk at the same pace...like hung over snails.
Mark, Bernadette's husband is the typical Leyland Brother and could probably give Mac Gyver a run for his money in ingenuity. He was a great help in setting up the tent and overall keeping us alive in the bush!
We got to use our new headlamps!! Yaay!
DAY 2
Today was the worst and the best of the days, here in the park. I woke up early to try and catch the sunrise over the Torres' but failed miserably. The hike to the mirador was 2 hours away, so all I could see was the sun hitting the tips of the Torres'.
Today, was a 14 hour day, 14 hours of hiking. 6 of the 14 hours was with a 25 kg back pack, up hills, down valleys over and through rivers. I think I know what the biggest loser contestants must go through when they have to put all the weight they have lost during the season back on and run around with it. It's fricken hard. To make it worst, I never had the weight to start with. All the step ups, lunges, leg presses and squats in the gym couldn't get you ready for this kind of exercise. My thighs are huge now and calf muscles are the size of bowling balls.
The first hike we did was to the Mirador Las Torres, this was a 2 hour hike with the last 45 minutes a mad scramble to the top over large boulders at a 80 degree angle, we're talking hands and knees, crawling up this massive mountain to get to the view point.
Once there, the jaw drops in amazement and all the pain of the last 45 minutes quickly disappears. The Torres' are so amazing that it's worth every single painful step to see them.
Mirador Las Torres
From left to right Torre Sur, Torre Central, Torre Norte
We stayed at the Mirador a good couple of hours to take it all in and psyched our selves up for the walk back to camp. Believe it or not walking back was so much harder than walking up. Slipping and sliding our way down the mountain we manage to survive the walk down with B only falling down a few times without major injury. The walk down really hammers the knee's and ankles.
When we got back to camp, it was time to put the back pack an hike for 10 hours. The hike was so looooonnnngggggg, it felt like it went on forever and it did. We went from Campamento Chileno to Campamento Los Cuernos. The walk involved some major river crossings. Glaciers melting from high up in the mountains form fast moving rivers and there are no bridges so they all have to be crossed by either getting in and walking across or hopping on rocks and stones hoping they are not loose.
We all made it across 4 major river crossings. Poor B, her feet were wet for the majority of the day, cause she walked right through all the river crossings. Also on some of the down hill parts, the poor girl walked down in her socks, with out any shoes, in fear of falling down, and on other parts of the trek she was on her bum sliding down the trail because she was terrified of slipping backwards and falling down and hurting herself.
But by the end of the day approximately 9 PM we had made it to our camp, enough time to cook up some risotto, have a yarn with Bernie and Mark then off to bed, sore as fck!!
The great thing about today was the awesome and ever changing views of the park. It was awesome to walk around the mountain, it's huuugggee and walking along Lago Nordenskjol. The colour of the lake is just out of this world.
DAY 3
The weather has started to turn, the wind is up and the clouds are gloomy. It looks like we were in for a rough day, and we we're, luckily for us our walk to the next camp was only 2 hours. You know your mind is messed up when you think that a two hour walk with a 25 kg back pack, up hills, on rocks, with basketball shoes is short!
By know my body is completely shattered!! Shoulders are completely messed up, you don't even feel like you have any on ya, legs are just like jello, the arches in my feet are so flat now that they bow outwards! The pain!!! But the show must go on and it did. We powered through the walk, and made it to the next camp site in good time, Campamento Italiano.
We set up our tents and then proceeded to attack the French Valley! The middle part of the 'W'. After talking to some people back at the hostel in Puerto Nateles, this was the section not to be missed and came highly recommended by anyone who had done the 'W'. When you walk through the French Valley on your left side is a massive glacier (Glacier Francis) and on your right side you have the sharp knife like mountain peaks of the Cuernos and in front of you in the heart of the valley 2 hours away are 21 granite mountain peaks some covered with snow while others are either poking through clouds or are covered by them.
When you reach the valley Mirador, you are completely surrounded by 360 degrees of Torres Del Paine Magic. Absolutely Amazing!!! I've never seen anything like the French Valley in Torres Del Paine. It's a photographers dream and landscapes that go beyond any mans imagination.
The hike up wan't too bad either, only major river crossing which B completed quiet confidently :-)
GO B!!!
The French Valley was definitely worth the hike, we had a lot of fun! After taking all the sights in, it was back to camp for one last time. Dinner was great too, ravioli over a camp stove had never tasted so good. As I brushed my teeth in the icy cold river from the melting Glacier Francis the sun began to set behind the mountains. Torres Del Paine left us with even more images of brilliance with a perfect Patagonian sunset over the mountains.
The typical Patagonian sunsets look like this!!
DAY 4
Today was a slow hike out of the park to the Lake Pehoe campsite to catch the Ferry out of the park. We were all so buggered and short for time that we had decided to skip the Glacier Grey stem of the 'W'. Only giving us reason to come back and see it all over again :-)
The walk out was amazing with the mountains and the sun behind you leaving the park offered great views and high winds. The views were just outstanding being able to see the peaks of the mountains was great, seeing clouds form of them was even better. Up here, the water is so clean, you just drink it right of the streams. The start of the water cycle!
Torres Del Paine is a must do for anyone coming to South America!!!!
Yesterday we went to Tierra Del Fuego National Park. Such a beautiful place, we took a trail that was meant to take 3 hours to complete but took our time to take in all the ever changing scenery. The trail we took was the number 2 trail called Costera Trail, which to me translates to 'the coastal trail' and that's what it is... 4 hours of Beagle Channel scenery. Snow capped mountains in the background, ever green trees protecting us from the wind.
We took our time on the trail, we had a picnic in one of the many small bays along the trail. Nothing like a good old fashioned tuna sandwich with potato chips and red gatorade, Awesome...
The trail took us about 5 hours to complete, it was a pretty easy trail, no big hills to climb up on and B didn't fall down once which was good. hehehe
Other highlights on the trip were finding thousands of muscles on the beach. We wanted to take like 20 of them and cook them, but being a national park we kind of just left the muscles on the beach where the belonged. But there were just thousands of muscles on the beach. It was like a seafood buffet waiting to happen.
We saw some cool looking trees that have been blown by the wind so much that they are like side ways. These trees are pretty common around here, there called 'flag trees'.
The day was an awesome one, the weather changed only three times in the space of us walking around, which made it even better.
"This blog is for the the traveller within us all. The explorer couped up in the daily grind waiting for the chance to throw on a backpack and see the world. The world is anamazing place. It can melt your heart with sights of kindness and challenge your beliefs with great injustices.There are great injustices throughout the world, yet there is also great hope. Of course, we all don't have not enough time to see all that is beautiful in the world, which makes it valuable and important to cherish the places we get to."
