Argentina to Chile (Puerto Mardryn, Rio Gallegos, El Calafate, Puerto Natales, Torres Del Paine)

It´s 8:30pm and I am in pueblito nowhere. In this town called Puerto Natales. Town of 19,000. It´s pretty far south in Chile - almost at the end of Chile (Punta Arenas which is even more boring is about 3 hours south of here). I´m going to Punta Arenas tomorrow, so I can go south and catch a plane that goes north to Puerto Montt. Yeah, transportation here is limited and if there is no bus, then there is no bus. Feeling a little exhausted from the last few days.

This town wouldn´t be so bad if it weren´t for all the tourists. I´m not a tourist of course with my Molson Canadian trucker hat. Ok this may be a long post. I will try to keep it short. Here we go...

Arrived in Puerto Madryn after a long 17 hour bus ride. Highlight was waking up to a collage of pinks, oranges, yellows, and reds along the Patagonian horizon - absolutely nothing around. You just see sand and shrubs for miles and miles. The Patagonina in Chile and Argentina makes up 1/3 of the land but only 5% of the countries´populations. Ok back to Puerto Madryn. Sleepy port town in Argentina - more like a deserted ghost town. So I thought. Walked around a bit and found a youth international hostal. Clean and spacious. I said why not, I´ll take a bunk. Met an English dude, cool guy, who was climbing the Andes from Venezuela to Chile. I may join him at some point in Bolivia. Met my roommates, ¨the Austrians¨ who were as interesting as paint. When I asked where they were from, they looked at me like I had three heads...¨We are from AUSTRIA¨. Riiiiiight. Of course I should have recognized your German accent. Went to a local bar with some Irish dudes I met in the Hostal (the town is actually quite lively) full of Argentenians watching a soccer game. The Irish asked to watch the Irish-Wales match. It was changed. Yeah, way to make a first impression.

Went exploring the next day. Started running - very windy - ate a bucketful of dirt and sand. Ended up running/ walking 15km along the coast line. Beautiful views of the Patagonian desert. Saw some dead penquins but that was about it. Nothing around. Had to walk 15km back. Decided to run back as my hands were starting to turn a nice purplish hue from the sun burn. 30km - 5 hours of walking and running - two burnt hands.

Next came the Germans. Three girls, Daniela, Claudia, and Katherine - and one guy, Andre. We decided to fire up some parilla (bbq) using the grill that hadn´t been used in 30 years - Argentenian style. The meat in Argentina is O.K. People go crazy, blah blah blah, it´s the best but I would say it´s about a 6-7 out of ten. Rented a car with the three German girls to Peninsula Valdes - the main reason people come here - to see armadillos, sea lions, penguins, guanacos (part of the llama family), and elephant whales. I went mainly to sea orca whales swallow up some sea lions. Apparently, they come up on the beach and swallow them up. Plus, I never saw penquins or elephant whales up close...so why not. Car rental was $50/ day. Not bad if you split the cost. Took off the next day to Peninsula rip-off. After getting jammed another $10 for the park entrance, we drove and drove and drove and drove. 12 hours total. Had some heated ham and mozarella sandwiches in the hot sun - mmm yummie and saw some penguins up close and hundreds about 200 metres. Couldn´t get any closer. Same with the sea lions. Llamas took off every time I approached them but I did pet an armadillo. Cute little guys. They were all over the parking lot. Saw an elephant whale that didn´t move. Looked like a giant piece of pooh lying on the beach. No orcas. Scheisse. Went out with the Germans for dinner that night. Good times. Their English was excellent for the most part with the occasional, ¨I have to blow my nose, can you get me some asspaper from the toilet¨? Ok. After killing about 50 bloody mosquitos in my dorm, because my Austrian friends left the windows open, I went to bed. Woke up to some thunderous flatulance. Thought it was the male Austrian. Turned out to be the female who had a 46¨width shoulder span. She almost gassed out the poor Englishman.

Took a bus the next day to El Calafate with Andre the German a.k.a. Music/ French Teacher/ Classical saxophonist sans the Kenny G jerry curl/ Opera Singer. On a ten week vacation here. Master of languages. One minute he´s talking English, then French, then Spanish, then German. It´s actually quite funny to see. Likes to end sentences with ¨Of course¨in all languages. Good guy. 17 hour bus ride to El Calafate which is almost the most southern town in Argentina next to Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego). That title belongs to Rio Gallegos or Armpit of Argentina (I was mistaken in my previous post). Made a brief stop before connecting to El Calafate.

El Calafate is a beautiful town. I mean this town is the reason I would live in Argentina. Huge lakes are flanked by mountains. It´s really picturesque. Touristy yet quaint. Most people come to see the Glacier Moreno which is why I came. President of Argentina has a summer home here. Stayed at an International Youth Hostel again. Met some Dutch, English, Israelis, and Americans and a Che Guevera look alike from Peru (lots of those here). Cooked up some pasta and did my laundry in the sink for the first time. Good times. Rented a car with Andre for $50 again. This thing was built like a firefly. We took the most damaged car because the road to the glacier was unpaved and full of rocks. Went to the bus terminal to recruit some people so we could split the cost. An American, who had one too many red bull in his lifetime, joined us named Mike. I also ran into a guy that was my neighbour in Toronto 10 years ago, while I was on a 4 month work term. We lost touch but apparently he remembered my voice. Great memory. We saw the Glacier Moreno. Was it cool? Yeah. Ice falling all over the place and making thunderous splashes. I´ll load up the pics soon enough. After wiping tar off the car (Andre drove through fresh tar on one of the roads) with gasoline we returned the car.

Went horseback riding the next day. Andre and I found the place the day before and we asked the Gaucho (cowboy) dude...how much. My horse was the oldest, Mentira (which means ¨a lie¨ in Spanish). Jessie, an English bird, joined us. Claudio, was an old school vaquero. These are the guys that founded Argentina back in the day, when it was a poor colony. Locals, lacking in natural resources to sell/ develop, would go out to the countryside and skin cows (leaving the dead carcases behind) and bring them back to the main port, Buenos Aires, where they would be shipped off to Europe. They later figured out that they could actually use the whole cow (i.e., meat) to sell. These were the cowboys of the land. This is how Argentina initially built it´s economy and trade business. Argentenians from Buenos Aires are still referred to as Porteños today. Ok, enough boring talk. We continued on, over rough terrain, through lakes (at one point, we had to lift our feet above the horses´ heads so we wouldn´t get soaked) and marsh land. We galloped along the beach which was pretty funny - and a very sore experience. Climbed up a small mountain and overlooked the entire town. Took some more pics and rode back down to safety. All told, $12 and two hours later, best bang for your buck. Skip the Glacier. Buy a postcard instead. Made a decent dinner that night and shared some good wine with some interesting characters from all over the world. A good bottle will run you almost $3.

Ok, go take a break now. I am almost finished. Next day I took the 8:30am bus to Puerto Natales, Chile a.k.a. buttf*ck nowhere with Andre. It turns out we share the same sense of humour and although Old Man Klaus can occasionally go off on rants (I never met anybody who complained more than I) he´s a good traveling partner. After two hours of border checks, etc. we made it into Chile. Ok, now I really started to notice, it´s a little ¨Chil-ee¨ down here. Ha ha. Riiiiiiiiight. Ok so movin on, we arrived and got harrassed by local hotel/ hostal owners. Come to my place no come to my place. Finally, we saw a price for $5, offered to us by some guy who looked like, you guessed it, Che Guevera. Got to the door. Is this it? Opened the door into somebody´s living room. Hippie and pot head freaks lying around watching a plasma tv. Riiiiiight. Greeted by another Che Guevera again. Looked around for about 2 minutes, after checking out the urine stained beds and said, ¨No gracias Che¨. We decided to grab some cash at the bank (500 Chilean pesos is about CAD$1) and checked into Patagonia Aventure or Patagonia Jam U. This place looked straight out of a tourist magazine - rustic, antique with a cabin feel to it. The walls and ceilings were all wood paneling. I think it was built for the first Smurf settlers of South America. Chileans aren´t very tall. We checked in anyway.

Grabbed an excellent meal (Menu Del Dia - Menu of the Day) for $4. Reminded me of my mother´s homecooking, but not as good of course. I was getting sick of the Argentenian diet which consists of pizza, ham and cheese sandwiches (without the crust), meat, baby croissants, dulce de lece, and stale toast. I´ll talk about dulce de lece in a later blog. Ok, the reason I came here was to go trekking in the Andes to the National Park of Torres del Paine (Towers of the Pines) or Towers of Pain. Number of times I´ve been trekking in my lifetime? Um, 3...maybe. So we decide to rent a tent and cooking gear from Patagonia Jam U and buy some food...Mr. Noodles, cookies, some beans, some bread, crackers, vodka, pure de papas and about 10 kilos of bratwurst for the German. We´re all set to go so I decide to go buy a place ticket to fly from Punta Arenas to Santiago. But wait...where is my credit card. Oh oh...it´s sitting in the ATM machine in Banco de Chile where I forgot it (when we first arrived). In the midst of looking at the ¨new¨form of money I had forgotten to grab my card after I grabbed the bank slip. So, I´m freaking. What am I going to do on a Sunday night. Nothing, so I go to bed.

Next morning, I´m off to the bank for the 9am opening. Go directly to the bank manager and explain the situation. He says, ¨sorry sir, nothing I can do until 2pm when we do our regular replenishing/ checking of the bank machine¨. My bus to Torres del Paine is at 2:30pm. I go and pack. It´s now 11am. I decide I am going to block my card just in case I don´t get my card back. I get the toll free number for Visa International from the bank manager. Go to a locutorio and dial the number (here where there are limited supplies of everything, it can be very expensive to have your own phone number so people use the phone in private locations called locutorios. They are all over the place here in Chile and in Argentina. You walk in and ask to use a booth. You go in booth number 1, etc., dial your number and then pay the person at the front when you are finished. It´s all computerized so they know what number you dialed and how long you talked for. It´s easier than using a payphone sometimes and safer). Wrong number. Ok, to make a long story short, I finally managed to call Visa International and block my card after almost 3 hours running around town, trying to figure out how to make a collect call. Apparently, collect calls are unheard of and you still have to pay the locutorio the money to use the phone. Here, you just can´t dial zero for the operator. ¨Can you connect me to the operator¨. Huh, is all I heard until I asked the 15th person, who said, oh yeah, no problemo. All said, it cost me $1.25 to cancel my card.

So now it´s 2pm. I run to the bank to grab my card. Señor rent a cop is there to greet me. I have to wait until the place is empty - no customers - before they can open the ATM. Riiiight. Tick tock tick tock. C´mon, c´mon...It´s now 2:25pm. They open up the machine...¨Alexander Kevin Farrell¨? Yes, that´s me. ¨Ok¨. Um, ok can I have my card back? Here is a photocopy of it. ¨No, we are going to destroy it. Those are the rules. Redbanc, who is the transfer and processing agent for all the ATMs in Chile has instructed us to do this for all cards that are left in the ATM machine. We cannot change the rules for you¨. 2:27pm. Although, I would have liked to, I had no time to argue. I said forget it and run to my bus.

The trip to Torres del Paine is a bumpy and swirvy road. The Andes are truly impressive and magnificent. Right out of a picture book. Anyway, we arrive pay the entrance fee. It is raining...I mean pouring...gatos y perros. I strap on my handsome green rain gear ($6 poncho and $7 rain pants) and start the ascent. A French girl has joined along with another French dude. Both from Paris but not together. The wind is blowing really hard and I´m thinking ok, this is going to be harder than that trip I took to Peggy´s Cove with my grade 5 class. Up the hills, over the slippery banks, and through the rivers we go. We start climbing the mountain. I´m thinking what did I get myself into. Only 10 minutes have passed. Up, and up and up we climb. Along cliffsides with huge drop offs. Seriously, one step and you are toast. Although, it was rainy the mountains were so beautiful. I felt like I was in Lord of the Rings. Hard to describe. Almost two hours later in the distance, I saw our oasis, the Refuge where we ended up warming up, eating and grabbing some hot showers. We arrived around 8pm at the Refuge and camped outside. It never stopped raining. I almost froze to death. My sleeping bag was supposed to be for up to -10 temperatures...more like +10. We woke up and had breakfast. I grabbed the expensive breakfast that the Refuge offered while the others ate toast and coffee. I needed something hot after the brutal night. We left our bags at the Refuge and decided to climb up to see the Mirador Las Torres, which is basically a lookout point where you see these three moutain towers lined together. This is why most people come here. The hard core trekkers camp on the Glaicer and do the whole 9 day circuit. Um, yeah, I´m still in Kindergarten. Check it out if you are interested http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/torres.html

So we walked along the marked path. Much easier without packs and the rain had let up. The final leg of the path consists of boulders which you have to climb. It´s about 1km of just rock climbing and scrambling. Nothing crazy but still difficult. I managed to get up before the others. Took some snaps before the Towers of Pain clouded over. It then began to snow. I got out of there and began my descent while all the other suckas were still busy climbing. The rain had stopped but I still decided to head back that day to Puerto Natales. I could have continued on for three more days but they were expecting three more days of rain and snow. I wasn´t prepared for that nor did I want to be. It´s not very much fun, hanging out in a tent all day and night while the weather is crappy. So Andre and I came back and ditched the Frenchies. On the way back, it was beautiful sunny day. A little chilly but pleasant nevertheless. If you ever saw the movie Alive and remember the ending where they climb over the wintery peaks of the Andes and reach the lush green valleys of Chile, you will know the feeling that I had that day. Truly amazing.

So today I did nothing here. Just chilled and tried to catch up on my journal. Tomorrow I have a bus to Punta Arenas. Hopefully, I can grab a flight to Puerto Montt. I hear that there is less to do in Punta Arenas. Sorry for the long blog. I´ll try to keep them shorter going forward. Hope all of you are well. I´m still working on replying to my emails so please bear with me. Miss you guys.