Week 8 - Rushing northward

It feels like it's been a whirlwind week and when I look back I realise I've seen a lot and done a lot this week.

The first two days were spent in El Chaiten a town that appears to exists only for the foreign trekking and climbing tourist industry. It sits at the foot of Mount Fitzroy and many other extremely hard to climb peaks. Instead of climbs I opted for two, one day walks. The first was up to a small glacier field - with icebergs floating in a lake at it's foot, whilst the second took me to the foot of the Fitzroy mountain.

Having passed a couple of days there it was time to head north with Bariloche in the northern part of Argentina's share of Patagonia my next target. Took three days of solid riding to get there up Ruta 40. Ruta 40 is Argentina's great highway running pretty much from the south to the north of the country. It has a mystic to Argentinians much like Route 66 to Americans or the Nullarbor to Australians. Much of this comes from how hard and tough it was to do in the old days - the reality is time has moved on and at least in the south of the country most of the road is sealed. I did traverse one 70km section that was still unsealed and everyone warned me how bad it was - it wasn't, it was more a reflection of most people's inexperience with gravel roads. What was tough though was the wind - the area is famed for it and for one of my three days it certainly lived up to it. Three hundred kilometres in 70 kph side winds was tough.

Bariloche when I got therether a bit of a disappointment. The Lonely Planet guide described it as this jewel of 1920s buildings sitting beautifully on the edge of a lake. Well it might have been once, but any architectural integrity it had has been lost in the last few years due to massive over-development. It is an object lesson in how unfettered and unthinking developement can quickly ruin a place - it should be compulsory study for town planners!

Fortunately the country side around the town was still gorgeous making the visit worthwhile. Here are some shots from the area - it really was beautiful and I will remember it for a long time.

The Americas Week 7 - Border crossings, penguins, rock concerts and glaciers

It's been a busy week. We started with two border crossings in two days. Ushuaia is in Argentina, I wanted to stay in Argentina, but inconveniently a bit of Chile gets in the way and seperates the bottom bit of the country from the body of it.

Fortunately the border crossings here are very smooth and fast - except if you queue for 45 minutes in the wrong line 🙄.

Whilst briefly in Chile I spent the night at a town called Cerro Sombrero (literally Hat Hill) which was purpose built in 1958 to support petroleum industry in the area - it strongly reminded me of Australian purpose built towns like Woomera, right down to the obviously limited maintenance after the initial build enthusiasm had waned.

One of the problems of swapping countries is dealing with money. Both Argentina and Chile use the Peso - but different Pesos. The Argentinan one has an exchange rate of 15 to the dollar whilst for the Chilean it's around 500. It gets very confusing working out prices and whether things are reasonably priced or not. (And as an aside it's worth noting neither country can be considered cheap - prices are on a par with Europe and Australia).

Anyway having safely made it back to Argentina my first appointment was with another Penguin colony. Nut rather than the 10's of King Penguins we saw a week ago this one had 100,000+ Magellan penguins - slightly smaller but still enchanting.

Whilst in that area I also saw the southernmost lighthouse on the American continent mainland. Unfortunately I couldn't get closer than the photo below because it was back over the border in Chile. Later in the trip the hunt will be on for the northernmost one!

From therr it was off to El Calafate to see a glacier. But when I got to the town I found the town had its annual music festival on and was packed solid. Turns out all the concerts were free and huge numbers of Argentinians travel to it. So what could I do but attend.

This band above used the traditional means to make sure the males og the audience were happy. But the band belowe, Los Fabulous Cadillacs, who have apparently been an Argentinan staple since 1985, just used good music and energy - a fantastic night in a packed crowd (another aside; whilst alcohol did not appear to be banned virtually no one was drinking and it wasn't sold there. Instead families from toddlers to grandparents attended as big groups - a pleasant idea)

Having enjoyed the town and music for a couple of days it was off to see the glacier which is the towns normal tourist attraction. A few facts, 5 kilometres wide and 800m deep at its core, 70m tall at its front. It had to be one of the more awesome and impressive sights I have seen in my travels. Apart from that I'll let the photos tell the story.

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The Americas - Week 6: The End of The World

A lazy week in Ushuaia. Gaby was here for the first half before flying off to see her family for a month ( she will rejoin me in Buenos Aires in March) and after that I started being a single traveler again.

We arrived at the sign marking the end of the sign south at the same time as multiple bus loads of cruise ship passengers (not surprising since Ushuaia is a regular port for these ships with one or two there everyday we were in town). Suddenly we were instant celebrities - to the passengers it was like we were the only ones ever to have done such a trip; you feel a bit of a fraud because I know how many motorcyclists achieve this or something similar, but the praise was nice for a short while.

After Gaby flew out of town I stayed camping in the park and went hiking for a couple of days just to let the pleasure of reaching this goal sink in. Then it was time to head north - I suddenly remembered BA is over 3000km away by the direct route and with the side trips I had planned probably over 5000km away and I only had a month to do it.

Here are a few pictures from this week.

The Americas - Week 5: Ushuaia here we come.

Week 5

From Puerto Yungay we enjoyed a two day ferry ride down through the Chilean fjords - a narrow network of channels that largely keeps the trip sheltered from the Pacific Ocean. And narrow means narrow; often only a kilometre or two wide within two near vertically rising slivers of uninhabited land. The occasional ship wreck pitched on a rock mid channel also attested to the fact it was not uniformly deep. How it was navigated at night in pre-GPS days is something to marvel at.

Puerto Natales was our destination and our first town in Southern Patagonia, an area which is renowned for its winds. Here the plan was to visit Torres Del Paine, an area famous for its mountain views and something called the W Hike which takes you in amongst the mountains. We made an early decision not to do this hike because its scenic wow has made it a "must do" amongst the back-packer set meaning by all accounts it is overwhelmed and you have no sense of solitude. Additionally the Chilean National Park Service (quite reasonably) makes the most of this popularity and charges accordingly for you to do the hike  - all the fees mean a four day hike will cost you well over US$500 each, a bit much for our budget. We instead took the easier option and drove around the park service road instead - 50% of the view for 5% of the cost.

Next stop was Punta Arenas on the Magellan Strait, the passage that seperates the mainland American continent from the island of Tierra Del Fuego on which lies or target of Ushuaia. When we were there Gaby treated me to a ship visit - just in case I was missing work!

Another ferry ride, only a few hours this time and we were on the final leg south but with a quick stop for a King Penguin colony.

And then, in almost the first rain in 5 weeks we were there: