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.

Of time and stuff

Hostal Forestal, Santiago, Chile – 28/01/2008

Time is relative. Supposedly Enstein said it. He didn’t say, though, that when travelling it is doubly so.  Allow me to explain…

Between the hours of sleep I managed to capture, Galeano’s Espejos – Una Historia Casi Universal, the newspapers, the writing, the music and the movies, the over 13 hours of flight were easily spent without much ado. I got an emergency exit seat, which allowed more than enough room for my legs and for some serious rest, the movies weren’t horrible (quite entertaining actually), Galeano’s book s a wonder in print and the writing is always a trustworthy companion; so, the trip, which a priori frightened me  a bit with the  ghost of boredom, was quite easy to digest.

However, the little over two hours I spent between landing at Santiago Airport and arriving at Hostal Forestal  were excrutiatingly hard to swallow and almost impossible to digest.  Firstly, the queue I mentioned in my previous post, which I claimed to miss. It was partly true, but more than the its slow pace it’s its inconsistent rythmn that turns out to be truly annoying. Either it moves at a snail-like pace burrying me in a pit of monotony dug tiny step after tiny step, or it accelarates quite harshly giving us all hope for a swift end to this odissey. False hopes of course, shattered by the quick return of the snail steps.

The worst, however, was definately the luggage wait. Never a pleasure, I know, but this time it was sheer torture. It’s been a very long, long time (can I say ever?) since I’ve waited so long for my luggage. First, it took an unexplainable hour and a half to get the platform moving and then, and this is no one’s fault I know, my backack decided to make a very late appearance at the very last load of luggage.

What a rockstar.