El Calafate, El Chaltén

The week that’s passed since I last wrote here started off with a loooong bus ride, and ended with a relatively short but agonizingly slow one (6 hours, 5 1/2 on washboard gravel roads, and 2 flat tires…). I’m currently in El Calafate, on a bus “layover” between El Chaltén and Puerto Natales, Chile.

Not counting today, I only spent one full day here in El Calafate, just long enough to see “the” glacier–by which, of course, I’m referring to the Perito Moreno glacier, which was (until recently) one of the only advancing glaciers left in the world. It’s not technically advancing anymore, but so far that fact hasn’t seemed to have hurt its popularity–El Calafate is overpriced, overbooked, and overflowing with tourists.

Not that the glacier isn’t worth seeing. I originally thought it was overhyped, but I have to admit I was awed. Partly it’s the size–the sheer wall of ice towers over the observation platforms. Partly it’s the sound–every so often a huge chunk of the wall breaks off and crashes into the water with a sound like a muffled explosion, leaving a shiny greenish scar on the face of the ice. And party it’s just the thought of how ancient the glacier is, and how long it’s been following exactly the same routine. Any way you look at it, it’s pretty impressive.

But for sheer beauty, I’m going with El Chaltén. The day I arrived there, it was sparklingly clear, and my jaw dropped open the first time I caught a glimpse of the Fitz Roy range from the road. I was later to learn that those days are fairly uncommon. El Chaltén has to be one of the most beautiful places I’ve been in awhile, but, I should add, it has some of the worst weather I’ve seen in awhile. The day that I was going to go glacier trekking, for example. It started out okay, but by the time the group had hiked 3 hours up the mountain on the way to the glacier, the clouds had come in and the wind had picked up. I feel, actually, that the word “wind” doesn’t really do justice to the force of this one–true Patagonian wind has to be experienced to be believed. It was blowing straight off the glacier, and I wasn’t sure whether I should be trying to stay standing, or just be trying not to fly away.

Anyway, that was the end of glacier trekking for that day, but when I got back to El Chaltén, I realized that the town is really just a wind-tunnel in disguise. It didn’t help that none of the roads are paved, which means that anyone stupid or desperate enough to walk straight into the wind is bombarded with sand and small flying rocks, not to mention clouds of dust. And then it poured. Keep in mind that this is summer–and according to the locals, a remarkably mild summer for the town. No wonder only 300 people live there year-round.

Fortunately, the worst of the wind only lasted a day and a half, and the last day was absolutely gorgeous. I did a shortish (5 1/2 hour) hike to Mt. Fitz Roy, where I took loads of pictures, which you will all see if I ever get them developed. Until then, you’ll just have to imagine a view that fits with the word “incredible”.

So now I’m off to Puerto Natales, although (as some of you already know) I’ve been hearing disturbing reports of large, out-of-control forest fires n Torres del Paine from hostellers coming in the other direction. But it’s too late now to change my plans, even if I did want to stay in Calafate, which I don’t. So I guess I’ll just go anyway and see what happens…

sneak preview

Hmmm, well I was trying to put up a map so that everyone who slept through South American geography can see more or less where I’ve been, but it’s not working so well and I’m too lazy to figure out why, so here’s a link to one: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapshells/south_america/argentina/argentina.htm
Since not all the places I’ve been so far are listed by name, the quick guided tour: I started in Buenos Aires. Bused to Salta, in the Andean Northwest. From there I went north to Humahuaca (above Jujuy, not shown on the map), from there passed through La Quiaca/Villazón on my way to Uyuni, Bolivia (you can see the approximate route, but the towns aren’t listed, and Uyuni is probably just a little north of the edge of the map). I took a tour from Uyuni that went west through Bolivia and ended up in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile (if the town were shown it would probably be under the final A in Argentina). I was there for 4 days, then bused all the way down to Santiago, stayed there for 2 days, then crossed back into Argentina, through Mendoza and down to Esquel, which is where I am now. Esquel is not as big or important as the map makes it look, by the way.

Now the sneak preview of the rest of my trip: on thursday night I’m taking a bus from here to El Calafate (on the map it says Perito Moreno Glacier)… by way of Comodoro Rivadavia and Río Gallegos, which isn’t on the map but I think it’s in between Puerto Deseado and Santa Cruz. We’re not thinking about how long that’s going to take, and afterwards we are going to try to forget about it as soon as possible. But anyway, I’ll probably stay in El Calafate for a couple of days, maybe take a side trip to El Chaltén, which is just a few hours north. Then back into Chile, to Puerto Natales–basically just straight west from El Calafate, and home of Torres del Paine National Park. After that I’ll take a mini-cruise up to Puerto Montt, not shown, but at about the same height as Bariloche… oh, which also isn’t shown but would probably be right under the R in Argentina. If all goes as planned, I’ll end up in Puerto Montt on March 7th… and then book it back to Buenos Aires as fast as possible so that I can register for classes on the 9th.

Hope that helped anyone who was getting confused about place names… I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be able to post again, so now you can all stay amused by trying to figure out exactly where I am (love you, Mom).

happy birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the bestest, coolest, most adorablest little sister in the whole world, you know who you are hugs and i miss you!

Esquel, ARGENTINA

After an alarmingly long bus trip (Santiago-Mendoza, Mendoza-Neuquén, Neuquén-Bariloche, Bariloche-Esquel), I arrived here late last night, so tired that I decided to–just this once–treat myself to a hotel where I wouldn’t have to share either my room or my shower with ANYONE. I am happy to report that I woke up this morning fully recovered and feeling quite human again, and now that I’ve eaten and taken a walk around the town, I’m trying to decide where I want to go from here.

Actually, the walk around town was sort of unintentional, and mostly due to the extreme antiquity of all my maps–both the ones in my outdated guidebooks and the one I got from the tourist office. All I was really trying to do was find a restaurant, but since my maps were 0-for-7 on locating restaurants (most of the places listed don’t even exist anymore), I ended up with an accidental 1 1/2 hour tour of most of the main streets. The good news is that now I feel qualified to make some observations about the town and the area–I came here instead of staying in Bariloche because I was trying to find a place to stay for a few days that was at least slightly less ski-chalet, with slightly fewer tourists, and so far Esquel has pretty much lived up to my expectations. It’s been cloudy for most of the day, but from what I can see the surrounding area is gorgeous, and my experience trying to find a restaurant proves that they don’t quite have tourist-trapping down to a science here.

However, it’s turning out to be a lot tougher than I expected to get to El Calafate, which is where I was originally trying to go. For some reason, the only way to get there by bus is a 23-hour trip that goes all the way east to the Atlantic, then south, west, and north a little to finally end up in El Calafate. Inexplicably, there is no bus traffic at all on route 40 (which goes directly south along the Andes and would probably cut the travel time in half) between here and there, which means that to get there I’m facing either another long trip or a rather expensive one. Last night when I stopped in Bariloche, I actually thought about buying a ticket to Rio Gallegos–an extra 27 hours in bus–to try to get as close to El Calafate as I could, since I was traveling anyway. Luckily, Nature intervened (there were no tickets left) and when the disappointment passed, I realized that the plan was completely mad anyway, and the it would only ever have occurred to me in a moment of temporary insanity (brought on, no doubt, by way too much travel and too little sleep). So here I am in Esquel, and happy happy happy to be stationary for awhile, especially in a place where I can get outside a little and see some endangered alerce trees while I’m at it.

Oh, and Happy V-Day, and here’s one of those weird computer smiles to celebrate

Santiago

I may still be brushing sand out of my hair after my attempts at dunesurfing in San Pedro de Atacama, but as of now I have successfully washed all the sand out of my clothes, and as of tomorrow morning I’ll be leaving Santiago and heading back to the Argentine side of the border. If you had told me a few days ago that I’d be ready to tackle another marathon bus ride barely 2 days after my 24-hour Atacama to Santiago trip, I’d have laughed in your face, but the trip down here (although undeniably long) was actually surprisingly comfortable. Maybe because I hate flying so much, these long bus rides are growing on me–and I like that I get to see all the pretty scenery (which it was–gorgeous), even if it’s sort of a tease because I don’t have time to stop.

But I could tell for sure when we were getting close to Santiago, because about 100 kilometers outside the city, the air started to get sort of hazy. Ah, the joys of big cities. It’s hard to tell if Santiago really has that much more air pollution than Buenos Aires, or if it just seems that way because here there are pretty mountains behind the city to get blurred by smog, while in BA it’s just flat. Luckily, you don’t notice the air quality too much once you’re in the city–and it’s really a nice city, with a ton of cool buildings and open parks. I still haven’t forgiven Becc, Sarah, and Duc for not being here, but I did enjoy walking around the main pedestrian areas today and just gaping at the beautiful architecture and trying to remember everything that I used to know about the history of the Palacio de la Moneda. In spite of the inordinate amounts of renovation and road construction, the city is extremely clean–even the subway is immaculate. I’d like to come back here if I have time at the end of the trip… we’ll see, I guess.

What’s funny is that even though I’ve been in Chile for almost a week, it didn’t feel like it until I got to Santiago. I guess that’s because San Pedro (like every other intensely touristy place) doesn’t really have an obvious amount of local culture–it’s funny how similar tourists everywhere are. But Santiago definitely has its share of history, even if I can’t remember most of it and didn’t have enough time here to give myself a good refresher course. One thing that I have noticed, though, is that attitudes toward females are quite traditional. Or maybe it’s just young, north american females travelling alone… but I have had (at times) so much trouble getting people to stop giving me advice! At the bus station, the information guy that I asked for directions to the hostel practically shoved me toward the nearest taxi–he acted almost appalled that I was even thinking about trying to reach an unknown place on my own, even though I was pretty sure (and rightly so, as I found out later) that it would be almost as easy, and much cheaper, to take the subway.

Ah well. Tomorrow I’ll be back in Argentina, and from there I’m planning to head farther south, ending up eventually (we hope) in El Calafate.

still in San Pedro

Ways you can tell you’ve officially crossed from Bolivia to Chile:

1. They’re not speaking Quechua anymore (you still can’t understand anything they say, but at least it’s all Spanish again)

2. You have to disinfect all your shoes before you set foot on Chilean soil, dirty Bolivians.

3. You don’t have to go to 10 different places before you find one that will change traveler’s cheques.

4. There’s a trash can every 20 feet on the ped mall. In Bolivia I had to walk 8 blocks before I found a place to throw away my gum.

5. You haven’t seen a llama or alpaca in several days

6. You have electricity and running water again (oh, wait. San Pedro doesn’t consistently have either. um, next.)

7. The bus system, is, in general, very good. Sometimes the buses even run on time…

8. But oh man, do you pay for it. Dead giveaway you’ve made it to Chile: everything’s expensive! (that phone call home the other day? 15 dollars. ouch… but worth it, of course–happy bday J)

San Pedro, CHILE

1. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN!

2. THE POSTING: I’d just like to start off this post with a sad sigh. After all my time in Northern Argentina, where I speak better spanish than 90% of the tourists, and Bolivia, where they speak nice and sloooow (except when they speak Quechua, but that’s another issue), I was thinking I was a hispanohablante star. Good thing I have Chile to keep me humble. I got to San Pedro de Atacama, in N. Chile, yesterday… and I’m TOLD they’re speaking Spanish, but really I understand less than half of what they say. Not only does everyone speak really fast, but they leave the endings off half the words. Fantastic. And the communication is even worse when I try to talk to them.

But other than that, I really like San Pedro–it has a kind of laid-back, hippie-ish vibe, especially now when half the people there are backpackers and tourists. The food here is fantastic, too (I love Argentine food, but it does tend to get repetitive) and if the scenery isn’t quite as beautiful as Salta or Bolivia, it’s still pretty stunning, in a dry, deserty, wide-open-spaces sort of way. But speaking of Bolivia reminds me that I haven’t said anything about my minitour of southwest Bolivia. Which reminds me that I need to come up with some new landscape-describing words, cause I’ve already overused the standard ones and I’m not even halfway through my trip. Sorry to everyone who’s been cringing while I overuse “beautiful”. But anyway, Bolivia. I left on friday, with minimal problems, although I did have a bit of trouble booking the tour (I made one reservation, but when I came back to pay for it the tour guy and actually the whole tour agency had pretty much disappeared, and when I tracked down another representative I was told that in fact the company wasn’t even running tours at that point). But other than that, and a little credit-card snafu, everything started out pretty well. The tour vehicle was a 4WD Toyota, which was good because most of the tour wasn’t over what you’d call “roads”. We spent the whole first day driving across the Uyuni salt flats, the largest and highest in the world (I think). I mentioned earlier that I visited some salt plains while I was in Argentina, but these were totally different. The rainy season has covered the entire surface of the salt flats with about an inch or 2 of water, so instead of being just glaringly, sparklingly white, the whole thing was basically turned into a 12000 sq. km. mirror–absolutely spectacular.

The second and third day we left the salt plains and headed to a series of salt lagoons in the mountains. Again, the scenery was spectacular–and it seemed to change about every 5 minutes, from giant pink and green lakes, to flat plains with giant boulders and strange-looking puffy shrubs, to rocky hillsides covered in cacti, to geysers and hot springs, to snowstorms (which isn’t exactly scenery, i know)… The area is pretty much uninhabited–we only passed through a couple of tiny llama-herding towns. It really made me wish I had time to see more of Bolivia. Some other time, I guess.

I was originally planning to stay several days in San Pedro, so it was an unpleasant shock to discover how expensive things are here–and also, since the nearest ATM is 1 1/2 hours away and my detour to Bolivia pretty much used up all of my available currency (US, Argentine, and traveller’s cheques) that I have some serious cashflow problems. So the new plan is to stay here for just a couple of days (long enough to see some of the major sights and try out dunesurfing) and then grab a bus to Santiago. Agenda from there TBA.

Uyuni, BOLIVIA

I still can’t believe I made it here yesterday. The trip started out all right–although my bus from Humahuaca was an hour late in arriving at La Quiaca, on the Argentine-Bolivian border, I made it across without problems, mostly thanks to the huge number of children that seem to run wild in the border area and who somehow reappeared ahead of me at each checkpoint (no matter which side of the border I was on) to tell me where to go and what to do in the complete absence of any sort of signage. I got my passport stamped, filled out the immigration form (“Are you involved with any terrorist groups? Have you ever participated in a genocide? Are you coming to Bolivia to traffic drugs of any kind?”) which the Bolivian officials didn’t even glance at, and only had to ask directions 3 times to get to the train station, which I guess was right where it was supposed to be, just farther away than I’d thought.

And that was the end of the easy part. When I got to the station around 1pm, I discovered that the lone ticket agent had gone on his lunch break and wouldn’t be back for an hour. Not only that, there were only 18 unsold seats on the 3:30 train–and about 25 people already waiting, who glared at me as I took a seat. I later understood the glares–normally in a situation like that each person takes a number, so that everyone gets served in the order they arrived. Unfortunately, the numbers had run out after the 5th person, which meant that everyone else was preparing to fight tooth and nail to keep their place in “line”.

Actually, people were amazingly nice about it at first. When the ticket agent finally arrived, everyone shuffled over to stand in some sort of order, and everything was relatively tranquil until the guy announced that not only were there just 18 seats left for that day’s train, there were just 17 seats left for the next day’s train. I have to hand it to him–that’s not an announcement that I’d want to make to a roomful (by that time) almost 80 people who had already been waiting for over an hour. Someone tried to cut the line, and it started to get sort of ugly… and that was about when I realized that the office didn’t take credit cards, and I had forgotten to get Bolivianos on my way to the station, and I didn’t even have enough Argentine pesos to change to buy a ticket–so even though I was sort of close to the front of the line, I had absolutely no money.

So… I played my only two cards: the dumb tourist card, and the damsel in distress card. And amazingly, it worked–I still don’t know how. The seats for both that day and the next were already sold out, so I was getting ready to spend a couple of nights in Villazón… but just as I got to the front of the line, a little old man came in to return his ticket for that day. I pleaded with the ticket agent to let me buy it, and then to please please pleeeease (there’s no such thing as dignity in a situation like that) hold it for me for 10 minutes while I ran to get some cash. He took pity on the “bella señorita turista” and said I could. The train left at 3:30pm, and it was 3:05pm when I sprinted out to find a taxi and cash in one of my traveler’s cheques at a casa de cambio.

Or at least that’s what I thought. Silly me, but how was I to know that most of these money places had never even seen traveler’s cheques, let alone exchanged them? I went to one place, and they looked at me like I was crazy, then directed me to another one around the corner, where they directed me to a bank. Time: 3:12. The bank didn’t change those cheques either, but they said there was an ATM a few blocks away… which, when I got there, I found was only for deposits. The instant cash branch didn’t change the cheques either. Time: 3:18. All told, I must have tried every money-changer in town before I found a lady who took my cheque and calmly counted out 381 Bolivianos, ignoring my increasingly frantic fidgeting as I waited. Time: 3:27. The taxi driver floored it back to the station, where I sprinted inside, grabbed my backpack off the middle of the floor where I had left it, and ran to the front of the train. Time: 3:29. Whew. Only not quite… My backpack wouldn’t fit in the overhead, so I had to take it to the baggage car all the way in the back of the train. Then I ran back to the front, said goodbye to the ticket agent (who had mysteriously reappeared) and jumped on to the train as it was pulling away. Time: 3:31.

And that was the end of the drama, except for the hostel not being where it was supposed to be when I arrived in Uyuni last night around 1:30am. But luckily I found a place, and tomorrow I’m leaving on a tour of southwest Bolivia–three days, and ending up in Chile on the 3rd. I’m actually kind of bummed that I can’t stay longer in Bolivia… the little I saw from the train was gorgeous, and the culture is absolutely different from what I’m used to in Argentina. But I’m already feeling that a month is way too short for this kind of trip, and anyway, I’d never forgive myself if I ended up having to rush through my tour of the Patagonia. So Chile it is, and from there, I’m heading south again.

Humahuaca

I’m going to make this relatively short, because Internet access here is 2-3 times the price it should be. And by “here”, I’m referring to Humahuaca, a tiny town in Jujuy province a few hundred kilometers north of Salta. I got here yesterday morning, after 4 hours of such spectacular scenery I didn’t even mind that I was in a bus, and found a hostel just in time to get to the central Plaza to see one of the town’s major tourist attractions.

It’s saying something about the place to point out that the attraction I mentioned is: at noon (more or less) every day, a life-size, mechanized statue of San Francisco emerges from the clock tower. He lifts his cross, raises an arm (in blessing or something), then disappears. The tourists take pictures and clap delightedly. Cute, in a cheesy way, I guess… I love this town.

Actually, it seems like there’s more going on this week than usual–it’s festival time, which means that in addition to a rather large number of church services every day, occasional fireworks (or, as in this morning, random explosion noises–I couldn’t quite figure out where or why), lots of people walking around in gaucho gear (gauchos are Argentine cowboys, for anyone who missed spanish 305), and a crafts fair, there are also occasional parades and other larger events. This morning I looked out my window to see a procession go by carrying a statue of Mary and singing.

Of course, all the “indigenous culture” stuff only adds to the picturesqueness of the town, even if the place is completely overrun by tourists. The mountains around here are beautiful as well–I’m going to try to find a little hike to do later today, after the sun gets a little less strong (I’ve already had enough sunburns for one week, thanks). Definitely a short one, though, because with the altitude here (over 3000m I think), I find myself a little out of breath when I try to do really challenging things, like climb too many stairs at once.

The hostel where I’m staying is small, but I got a room all to myself last night (score! now if only the hot water worked…) and the lady who owns it definitely goes out of her way to make sure I’m enjoying myself here. Unfortunately, neither she nor anyone else (including the supremely unhelpful people in the tourist office) can tell me anything about the train I need to catch from the Bolivian border to Uyuni. I’m hoping that the info in my out-of-date Lonely Planet is OK, because from what I’ve heard I won’t be wanting to spend any more time in La Quiaca and Villazón than I really need to. So if all goes well tomorrow (i.e. my bus from here gets to La Quiaca on time, and I make it across the border with all my stuff and without problems in time to catch the train) tomorrow night I’ll be in Uyuni, BOL, trying to remember how to speak non-Argentine spanish and how many $=1BOL. It’s hard to believe I’ve only been traveling for a week…