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.

Let the wanderings begin…

Barajas Airport, Madrid, Spain – 27/12/2008

Thanks to the never-ending 4 hours I am currently killing at Barajas Airport (Madrid) between my inbound flight to Lisbon and my outbound flight to Santiago de Chile, it so happens I am opening my brand new blog in the local overpriced cybercafé.

In the following 20 days or so I’ll be travelling around Chile (well… just Santiago actually), Uruguay and Argentina (Buenos Aires and Patagonia) and I intend to post here anything I deem relevant about this trip.

Obviously, the concept of “relevant” is vague at best, so you can hope (dunno if hope is the appropriate term here) to find here anything from photos of deserted airports, to my random writings, to stupid little anecdotes only I will find interesting.

Right now I am bored to tears… I’ve been wandering the airport for 2 hours now (I know it’s not much, but I am easily bored) and it’s been a dreary wait… the airport is half empty (have a couple of photos to prove it, but this computer doesn’t like my cam’s memory card), the shops are as interesting as a brick and I’ve read the newspapers I brought from Portugal twice over.

Ergo, this blog was born.

Hope you enjoy it. Will try to come back to it in Santiago, hopefully with a couple of photos to liven things up.