Of going back

Santiago Airport, Santiago, Chile – 13/01/2009

The strange taste of going back. I spent the last today with a huge tantrum inspired by forcefulness of my return to Barcelona, to work, to my “normal” life. Now, sitting on the plane ready to take for a 16 hour flight to Zurich and then to catch another plane to Barcelona, the only thing I want is to return as soon as possible.

I hate returning in direct proportion to how much I enjoyed myself during the trip. I think most people do. Once the trip is through and the goodbyes are made, I only wish a trouble-free and expedite return.

Going back to Barcelona. To work. To my “normal” life, though the most “normal” I feel and the happiest I ever am, is whenever I am travelling.

Of leaving…

Montevideo, Uruguay – 11/01/2009

I don’t wanto to leave. Tomorrow in the afternoon I’m going back to Santiago and then back to Barcelona. But the only thing I know right now is that I don’t want to leave.

Up the coast

Valisas, Rocha, Uruguay – 10/01/2009

My last day of beach in Uruguay and probably my last day of beach until the sun and the heat com back to the Iberian coasts. In a single day, several hundreds of kilometres to find and visit 3 beach towns in the province of Rocha. Each one with its specific mood.

First stop: Cabo Polonio. After many kilometres, countless mates and a lot of uncertainty we finally arrived at the Cabo Polonio access point. Carefully hidden behind a sea of dunes, you can only get to “El Cabo” through a truck service that carries the beach-starving people from the parking to their desired destination. The beach, of course.

Cabo Polonia has 2 beaches, Calavera y Sur, it has an enviable sandstrip, it has a lot wind, it has a little market laden with hippy stuff for sale, it has a lighthouse that I didn’t visit, it has an amazing colony of sea lions, it has a few dozen shacks with no light or running water where a few lucky people get to spend a few days, weeks or even the whole summer. As far as beaches go, by far the most beautiful beach I saw in Uruguay. Not sure if I could spent 3 months here, as some do, but I would certainly spend a few days enjoying the rest, the sun and the sea.

Unfortunately, the clouds and the wind decided to come to Cabo Polonio for lunch so we decided to take off to Punta del Diablo, 40 km to the North, to have some lunch ourselves. Punta del Diablo could be an incredibly beautiful place, and I’m sure it once was, but nowadays it’s so absolutely saturated with commerce, cars which are nearly parked in the sand and beer-drinking teenagers that a few minutes after I arrived I already wanted to leave. On thing is for sure though, you have to go the market and try the fish and shellfish “empanadas” and the original seaweed “buñuelos”.

Last stop before going back to Montevideo: Valisas. Quite similarly to Cabo Polonio it has no electricity or running water, except for those who have their own generators, but it is a lot easier to get to. Anyone with a car can get there from Ruta 16. Some mate with some excellent company to end the day and now the 3 hour drive back to Montevideo.

A scent of Portugal in Uruguay

Colonia, Uruguay – 09/01/2009

Colonia. An Uruguayan city founded by the Portuguese which breathes Portugal everywhere, in its stone houses, in the door and window frames, in the street names printed in tiles and even in the tomato sauce I had for lunch. The Rio de la Plata, brownish and warm as usual, bathes and gives meaning to the city, one of the main entry points into Uruguay from Argentina. Actually, nearly all the restaurants, shops and other businesses have the prices tagged in Uruguayan Pesos, Argentinean Pesos and US Dollars.

The town is small and beautiful, with little else to see except the old city centre and the Rambla, but it is surely worth the visit, even if it’s only to go up the lighthouse and watch the roofs of the houses.

The plan was to spend the entire day here but the town’s smallness, the excessive summer heat and the lack of a swimsuit to do some beach time take me back to Montevideo earlier than expected. I leave with an imprint of this little piece of Uruguay with brush strokes of Portugal, planted beside the Rio de la Plata.

Hasta la vista, Patagonia

Flight 2871, somewhere between El Calafate and Buenos Aires, Argentina 8/01/2009

And so my first Patagonian adventure ends. My first because I am sure, as sure as I am that I will go back to Mexico and Ireland some day, that there will a second, a third… who knows? Adventure because, pardon if I exaggerate, these last few days truly felt like and adventure.

I did kilometres on a bike against a wind that forced to pedal even when going downhill, saw and heard unknown birds during walk around Laguna Nimes, got sun, rain, fog, snow and a lot of wind in the three hour trek to Glaciar Grande and Lago de la Torre, indulged my eyes with views I thought impossible and bestowed my legs endless kilometres on the way up to Fritz Roy and Laguna de los Tres, walked on the ice in a glacier as big as Buenos Aires…

For some it might not be very impressive, but for me it was an adventure. Even today, which I spent reading in the sun in the only windless day I got in Patagonia, had something adventurous about it.

Thank you Patagonia. Until we meet again.

Rocks on the rocks

Perito Moreno glacier, Patagonia, Argentina – 07/01/2009

In the twenty seven plus years of my existence I had only read about glaciers and had seen nothing but photos and videos of glaciers. Yesterday and the day before yesterday I got to see glaciers live, today I get to walk for over four hours on top of one.

A remarkable evolution in my relationship with glaciers.

In the middle of the austral summer I put on my windproof coat, my gloves and ice walking spikes on my feet to set out, together with twenty other strangers and five guides, into the icy vastness. The first thing that strikes you once you’re on a glacier is that it’s a lot of ice. I mean a lot of ice. Really. The second thing that strikes you once you’re in a glacier is that there’s even more ice, a lot more, than you imagined. Never ending ice moving two meters a day, despite the apparent stillness, born in the icy mountains and dying in the waters of the Lago Argentino. A slow suicide, with huge ice blocks jumping from its imposing walls into the waters, in a roar of foam and thunder that sets off a string of photographs and interjections from the tourists who wander about. And there are a lot of them.

Walking on ice for four hours, four hours of ice and more ice, is a “strange” experience, to say the least, for a Portuguese guy who grew up two minutes away from the beach and now lives in Barcelona.

Strange, beautiful and impressive.

Strange because you have to adapt to walking with two extra kilos of metal in your feet which cling to the ground, because at first so much white numbs the senses, because, in the beginning, when I am putting on my spikes while the wind nearly tumbles me over I can’t help to ask myself “What the hell am I doing here?”.

Beautiful because once the wind dies down and you go into the glacier’s valleys, hills, creeks and waterfalls, the wind, the weight of the clothes and even the wound the spikes caused in my heel are rendered irrelevant to give way to a new concept of beauty my poor Iberian brain was not prepared to face.

Impressive because as the hours go by and the weather goes back and forth between nice and not-so-nice, I realise that without the 5 guides none of us would endure much time in this labyrinth of cracks, this mountain range of razor sharp hills, this field of bottomless “sumideros”. As I looked into the sumidero the guide half-jokingly called La Boca del Diablo (The Devil’s Mouth) I let myself be conquered by a true sense of respect for this white titan.

Already on the boat back, while I enjoyed the whiskey and the alfajor the guides offered us, I reviewed the dozens of photos I took without truly realising how beautiful they were. It was only in the night when Marc and Martin went berserk with some of the photos that I really grasped that I had the privilege to spend four hours walking in a truly special place.

Beyond words

El Chalten, Patagonia, Argentina – 06/01/2009

The first view of the Fritz Roy.

The first photograph of Fritz Roy.

The organization and dedication of the wildlife guards.

The begining of the trek to Laguna de la Torre.

The sun.

The Rain.

The mist.

The snow.

The wind, always the wind.

The hundreds of broken down trees.

The hundreds of trees burnt by human stupidity.

The steppe.

The woods.

The bogs.

The Fritz Roy river and its blueness.

The rocks of all sizes.

The Laguna de la Torrre and the same blueness.

The Glaciar Grande.

The mountains hiding behind the mist.

The return.

The silence.

The 22km we walked.

The Rancho Grande steak with 2 eggs.

The bottles of Quilmes.

The few hours of sleep.

The 7am sun.

The beginning of the Fritz Roy climb.

The 1001 views of Fritz Roy.

The smoking mountain.

The streams and rivers.

The Poincenot, the Fritz Roy, the Madsen and the Glaciar de las Piedras Blancas.

The wooden bridges.

The climbs and more climbs.

The “holas” and “hellos” of the people who pass us by.

The 1001 photos of Fritz Roy.

The Rio Blanco.

The Camp.

The first view of the climb to Lago de los Tres.

The company of Marc and Martin.

The people who pass.

The people who return.

The steps.

The stone steps.

The arrival.

The view.

The Laguna de los Tres.

The Fritz Roy in close-up.

The heroes that climb Fritz Roy.

The 1001 photos of the lanscape.

The smiles.

The pause for some food.

The wind.

The beginning of the return.

The people who pass and ask how much further.

The waters of the river we drink.

The way down.

The 2002 views of Fritz Roy.

The 2002 photos of Fritz Roy, again.

The wind.

The lunch break in the sun with a view to Fritz Roy.

The return to the hostel.

The pen that writes.

The notebook in which I write.

There are no adjectives in this world that can describe any of this.

Beauty on Earth

El Calafate, Patagonia, Argentina – 04/01/2009

Beautiful. Truly beautiful. When I opened my eyes on the plane and looked through my seat’s window to gaze upon the Lago Argentino for the first time it was exactly what I though: beautiful. Beautiful and blue. A new blue, hard to define for someone who, like me, had never seen such a blue. Bright and Rafaelesque. It was an undoubtedly magnificent welcome to Patagonia.

Once in El Calafate, a tiny conglomerate of hostels, hotels, huts, restaurants, gift shops, travel agencies and even a casino, founded on the tourist success of the neighbouring Perito Moreno glacier, I reached the I Keu Ken hostel. Let me make this perfectly clear: it is, beyond the shadow of any doubt, one of the best hostels I’ve ever been in. Comparable only to the McBackpackers hostel chain in Scotland. The view to the Lago Argentino is absolutely breathtaking, the rooms and bathrooms are immaculate clean and the staff is downright amazing. As of this moment, I want to leave a huge hug to Carolina, the Fedes, Julieta, Martin and, of course, Areco. The guests were as easy going, pleasant and laid back as the staff, so here’s another hug to Martin, Marc, Elad, Helen and Julieta’s cousins, Gisela and Virginia. At I Keu Ken I spent good long hours reading under the sun, writing, eating, playing cards and chatting with the other guests in the welcomed company of a Quilmes bottle. All in all, in a couple of words: 100% recommendable. If you’re thinking of going to El Calafate, I Keu Ken is the place to stay.

The town, as I said before, hasn’t got much to see, so this morning I decided to rent a bike an took off towards Punta Soberana, so I could have a view of El Calafate from the other side of Bahía Redonda and see a bit more of the Lago Argentino. The ride on my way there went along without a glitch, generous portions of sun very little wind and a few wild horses that gladly posed to the camera. Already beyond Punta Soberana I decided to stop and lie down on a huge rock for a little rest and sunbathing before I went back.

And then the wind came.

I awoke from my sunny slumber to face a freezing, unyielding wind and a the menace of a cloud with a not so friendly look. I got back on my bike and pedalled back to El Calafate.

And then the wind got worse.

The ride back was a real odyssey, fighting against a brutal wind which even forced me to pedal downhill and turned apparently easy climbs into climbs worth of the Tour de France. I might be exaggerating, but at that moment I’d have given anything to stop the damn wind. With the wind already in my favour it was a completely different story and, in some parts of the road, I didn’t even need to pedal at all.

In the afternoon, and as the wind showed no signs of slowing down, I decided to leave the bike alone and set off in a long walk around Bahía Redonda, where I took way too many photos of the poor horses that were grazing there, and to the Natural Bird Reserve of Laguna Nimes. I never heard such a variety of singing, chirping and whistling in such a small area.

The day, or should I say the night, ended with a delicious Kosher dinner prepared by Elad and what seemed liked an eternity playing Yaniv, an Israeli card game as simple as addictive. Now it’s bed time, that tomorrow I set out to El Chaltén, the Argentinian Trekking Capital.

Partying+Travelling=ouch

Ezeiza Airport, Buenos Aires, Argentina -  03/01/2009

Do as I say, don’t do as I do: when travelling, take care of yourselves, rest, sleep a lot and as soundly as you can, so you can face each day with all your energy and health. Since I’ve begun this trip I have already performed 4 trips in a less than ideal physical condition mostly, not to say wholly, due to the lack of sleep and the excess of alcohol.

While still in Portugal, on the eve of my departure, I landed on my bed at 8am, knowing very well that I had to get up early to go and have lunch with my grandmother and then fly for more than 14 hours to the other side of the Atlantic.

In Santiago, perfectly aware that I had to take a taxi to the airport at 5am, I join the improvised barbeque that spontaneously spawned in the hostel and ended boarding the airplane soaked in Pisco and with no hours of sleep on me.

New Year’s Eve in Piriapolis, stayed in La Rinconada until dawn and got to the ferry with little over an hour of sleep.

Yesterday, even though I once again knew I had to take a taxi to the airport at 6am, I just couldn’t say no to the invitation of going out with Juancho and his friends and now, of course, here I am, watching the Ezeiza airport through a blurry filter of Fernet and Quilmes.

Walk this way (in BsAs)

Buenos Aires, Argentina – 02/01/2009

How to see Buenos Aires in one day and a half? By walking. A lot. Really, a lot.

I arrived yesterday at 15h and, after a small adventure with the dumbest caretaker in the history of dumb caretakers, I managed to take hold of Juancho’s apartment key, a friend of a friend which allowed me to crash at his place even though he wasn’t even there. That’s why there’ll be no hostel reviews in this chronicle either. Anyway, moving on, I left all my stuff in the apartment and proceeded towards Recoleta and its parks. And what parks! The quality and quantity of Buenos Aires’ green spaces, all of them very well taken care of, is downright impressive. Truly in awe, I walked for hours from the Bellas Artes to Plaza Italia, always “on the green”.

El Che

Buenos Aires is a gigantic city and I’m usually not a big fan of such mega-metropolis (London, Madrid, Paris, Santiago, etc.). However, BsAs is a big city which knows how to be big. The ubiquitous presence of green areas and the wideness of its never-ending venues relieve the sense of claustrophobia its millions of inhabitants might cause. Exhausted after the five hour walk I returned to the flat in order to rest and prepare myself to discover Buenos Aires’ nightlife, on the first night of the year, a Thursday.

Prepared myself for nothing, it turned out, as the city was apparently stone dead, it had passed on, that night was no more, it had ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker, a stiff, bereft of life it rested in peace… you get the point. Eighty percent of all bars, restaurants and other commercial establishments were closed, and the ones that were open had hardly any clientele. The fact that I didn’t know the city and had only the faintest of ideas about where to go for fun also didn’t help. I walked for what seemed like an eternity to the Palermo neighbourhood only to find nothing. Then I took to San Telmo and, you guessed it, nothing. I ended up eating a hamburger in one of the few open spots in Avenida de Libertad, had myself a Quilmes and took a cab back to Juancho’s flat.

Today I woke up quite early to take care of my return from Patagonia and also to change the date for my return to Montevideo. I was expecting to dedicate several hours to these two tasks, but they turned out to be both quick and efficient. By 13h I was already done with the whole business. Went home, rested, hate and at 15h I was back on the street, to start off what was to be my longest urban walk so far. I took the Subte, the local subway, at Pueyrredon towards Catedral, the heart of downtown Buenos Aires, and, as always, I began wandering about.

I strolled into Plaza de Mayo where I visited the Cathedral, with its distinctive Greek-like columns, snapshot la Casa del Gobierno (the Government House), bought a bottle of overpriced cold water and set out towards the Obelisk, where the South American version of this year’s Dakar Rally was about to start. With the area completely packed with eager locals and tourists but completely devoid of any motos, jeeps, cars or anything else with a motor, I departed towards Retiro. Here I discovered yet another precious urban park, with a view to the Torre de los Ingleses and a statue of Gen. San Martin, the national hero. Following the cue of the slumberous locals I laid down on the grass for an hour-long dozy sunbath. The only moment of rest in the whole afternoon.

Batteries fully charged, I went back to the Obelisk on Av. 9 de Julio to mingle with the crowd and get a few shots of the motorcycles and their respective pilots. Bored to death (motorsports are really not my thing) I moved towards San Telmo through the lovely Florida Street, where I stopped to buy Borges’ “El Aleph” and two tango CDs at the mythical library “El Ateneo”. Must visit. On through calle Florida, then calle Perú and we’re in San Telmo where the bars, restaurants, tango houses, shops and tourists like me multiply themselves. It’s a party neighbourhood, and it shows. Due to my tight schedule I do not have a lot of free to linger around so, suddenly, I find myself entering La Boca, the most famous and troublesome neighbourhood in central Buenos Aires.

Home to the famed Boca Juniors football club and the godlike Maradona, La Boca is more or less what I expected it to be: a poor, very poor, neighbourhood, with a lot of adults livening up the streets, kids playing football virtually everywhere and stone-eyed elders in varying states of decay. But what really stands out, both literally and symbolically, is, of course, La Bombonera. The most famous stadium in South America (compared only to Brazil’s Maracanã) is truly impressive. Its vibrant blue and yellow plays perfectly with the colourful and somewhat derelict houses that surround it, and its striking murals are a mirror of the fierceness and character of the neighbourhood itself. Due to the stubborn non-elastic nature of time I couldn’t go in and visit the stadium, but it really wasn’t needed. The stadium had already left its mark in me.

With La Boca ticked in my checklist I went back downtown, about an hour’s walk or more, and took the metro back to flat to await Juancho’s arrival.