End of the World!

After a fairly quick stopover in El Calafate we found ourselves on a plane to Ushuaia – the most southern city in the world. Well, actually Puerto Williams in Chile is even further south, but the guys in Ushuaia somehow manage to ignore this. Nevertheless, it is very beautifully located between the Beagle Channel and snowcapped mountains.

 

We took a magnificent tour with a small sailing boat to some of the islands and learned a lot about fauna and flora. 

Then it was time to say goodbye... again... this time to my sister who needed to fly back to Europe after her three weeks vacation in South America. After having lovely company for the last six weeks I really felt lonely that evening when I was on my own again... sniff!

Making friends in El Chalten

After a very short stopover in El Calafate we made our way to El Chalten, which is in the north of “Parque Nacional Los Glaciares” and home of the famous Monte Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre – the defacto mountaineering mecca of Argentina. El Chalten actually means “Peak of Fire” or “Smoking Mountain” because the first inhabitants thought the mountain was a volcano as it seemed to be “smoking” non-stop. But in reality the summit is almost always covered in clouds. Almost always?! Not for us! Believe it or not – we were lucky again and saw the peaks on 3 out of 4 days!

In winter there are only about 600 inhabitants but in summer it gets flooded with tourists. I am really happy that we were there so early in the season as at the time of our visit not many tourists were around. Only after a short while we already felt like being amongst friends! We found a small hostel with the most helpful owner ever, went for an unbelievable good icecream and for dinner we found a hidden gem called “Como Vaca” (which means “I eat beef”). Fantastic! What else can you ask for in life! :-)

 

Another good thing about El Chalten is that you can do all treks on your own without any costs – very different to El Calafate where you needed to pay for everything. As we had just come back from a 5-day trek we wanted to take it easy and just went for two little hikes to some nice views of the surrounding glaciers and mountains.

On our second day though we went for a very spectacular excursion - ice-trekking on the biggest glacier in the park called “Glaciar Viedma”! It felt very special to walk on ice that has been there for thousands of years. An experience that will never be forgotten! 

On the third day we went for a relaxed 5-hours hike to Fitz Roy and glaciar Piedras Blancas.

We made sure that we were back early enough to have time in the afternoon for some more lush icecream and another visit to our favorite steak house “Como Vaca”  :-)

I dont want to go on too much about my passion about steaks, but after eating steak literally every day for the last six weeks I feel confident to say that the meat at this Parilla was the best I have ever tasted in Argentina (sorry James...). Moreover, as we had been there every evening we almost felt like part of the “family” and at the time when everybody else had left the restaurant the waiter and barman ended up playing cards and drank wine with us until late (again!).

The day we left El Chalten Nadja and I almost felt sad. We really felt comfortable there and easily could have stayed a couple of more days, but unfortunately time did not allow it as we had to catch a plane to our next destination.

Back to real Trekking!

Hurra! We could not wait to get to our next stop - a 5-day trek in beautiful “Parque National Torres Del Paine” in Chile.

Day 1 – Bus journey

Uargh! We had to get up at 4:30am in order to catch our bus. Even though we were quite sleepy on the bus journey we were wide awake the moment we entered the park. With its spectacular granite pillars, azure lakes, emerald forests and blue glaciers this park is supposed to be South America’s finest national park and after experiencing it I really would not doubt this.

There are many discussions whether to do the famous “W”-Trek (“W” because the trek is shaped like a “W”) from east to west or the other way around, but we decided to start west as we wanted to see the “Torres” in the red of the sunrise on our last day of trekking.

On the first day we took it easy though and only went for a bus journey through the park stopping at all major attractions including a bit of mini-trekking. That was the perfect start to get to know the park. It really was magnificent – especially as the sun was shining. 

Our guide told us that because of the clouds the Torres can normally only be seen on 2 out of 7 days and so we ended up taking million of pictures as we thought that this might have been the only chance to see those amazing sights. Well… as there is a saying in German that “When angels are traveling the sun is shining” we actually ended up having great weather every day! We really were sooo lucky with the weather! We had met people in El Calafate who told us that they had rain and wind every day and did not see a single bit of the Torres during their 5-days trek. But we actually ended up carrying our layers and layers of fleeces and wind jackets in our backpacks and were able to wear t-shirts instead. 

Our first challenge was to find a reasonable accommodation as we had not taken a tent with us and we were far away from the “W”-Trek with its (sort of) affordable refugios. We finally found a lovely “Posada” named “Rio Serrano” (love the name!) at beautiful Lago del Torre. The people were extremely friendly and we immediately felt like at home and spent the whole evening in front of the open fireplace playing cards ("Shithead" of course!). 

Day 2 – Lago del Torre to Glacier Grey 

On our first day of trekking we got a lift to Lago Pehoe and caught the ferry at midday to our starting point “Mountain Lodge Paine Grande” of the “W”-Trek. The trail itself was fairly easy and after about four hours of relaxed walking we arrived at our refugio “Lago Grey”. As we were early in the season there was only another couple there, but as they were camping we had the whole refugio for ourselves. So we ended up having good fun with the stuff and playing cards and drinking wine until early morning. Hhmmm… Probably not what most trekkers do when they are on a five-day-hike?!  ;-)

Day 3 – Glacier Grey to Paine Grande (Lago Pehoe)

The next day started relaxed again with a short hike close to the magnificent glacier Grey and then back down again to Lago Pehoe. Even though we had to walk the same way down as we walked up yesterday it really was a wonderful hike and we had to stop for lots of pictures of the beautiful Patagonian landscape formed by the wind (which strangely enough did not blow at all today) and the blue icebergs that have calved from the glacier.

Day 4 – Paine Grande (Lago Pehoe) via Valle Frances to Refugio Los Cuernos 

According to “Lonely Planet” today we would have needed to walk for 10 hours. I do not know whether we are so well in shape ;-) or whether the guide book counts for the slowest trekkers ever, but we did it in about 7 hours or so. You really have to see Valle Frances yourself to understand its beauty. Glaciers on the one side (that actually calved a lot because of the warm weather which was incredible to watch) and the high mountains of Paine Grande on the other side – WOW!

Day 5 – Refugio Los Cuernos to Refugio Chileno 

Another wonderful day of trekking! We arrived quite early at our next refugio so we had even more time for enjoying the beautiful landscape in the sunshine and playing cards.

Day 5 – Torres del Paine at sunrise

This was the toughest day as we had to start walking at 4:15am in order to get to the Torres del Paine viewpoint in time for sunrise at around 6am. It was quite weird to walk all on our own for about 2 hours through the forest in the darkness of the night. Just the light of our torches showed us the trail which was not always very well marked. So we were quite happy to see some more torches in front of us as it made us believe that we were on the right trek. When we actually ended up on a steep hill with lots of rubble and later on in the middle of a dense forest we were not too sure any more whether the guys in front of us actually knew where they were going. We had to "fight" our way through the thicket as time was running fast. We still do not know exactly how, but we managed to get over the tree line and had the most incredible view of Torres del Paine in the glowing red of the sunrise. We really got a big reward for our hard workout in the morning as there was not a single cloud on the sky. Incredible!

In the sunlight we actually realized that we had gone completely wrong and were far away from the trail (that explains the rocks and dense forest) and were actually much higher up than the viewpoint would have been  :-)

Now as we had completed the “W” we actually were a bit proud of us while walking down. We decided that we would deserve a special treat and so we went with our dirty trekking gear and unwashed hair to the most exclusive restaurant in the whole park and had a wonderful 3-course haute cuisine lunch before we went on the bus to El Calafate again.

Welcome to Ice Age!

We got a cold, windy and rainy welcome on the day we arrived in El Calafate in “Parque National Los Glaciares” and we got a feeling how nasty and unpleasant it can get in Patagonia. We booked ourselves on a tour to Glacier Perito Moreno for the next day and as lucky as we have been so far the weather turned to the better and we had a wonderful day out.

The glacier really was impressive with its measures of 30km of length, 5km of weight and 60m of height. It was literally breathtaking to watch and hear (it sounds like a gun shot) ice breaking off the glacier and we even had the opportunity to see a whole cave collapsing. 

The next day we took it easy and started to explore the surrounding of El Calafate including the beautiful Laguna Nimez.

Still being full of energy we went to an Estancia in the afternoon for horseback riding and typical Patagonian Parilla (BBQ). Yammy!