 |
| Ushuaia grafitti |
Hi everybody!
I've been slacking on update the blog about my Patagonian travels because I've been away from the computer & traveling & busy! I've been back in the USA for about a week. It is great to be back! I've been seeing a ton of friends & catching up on life stuff. I have an announcement that I'm moving to Portland, Maine! Crazy, I know. I'm going to start nursing school there in May. Big changes for this west coast baby, I sure will miss it & everyone but, who knows I just may be back one day knowing me...
Well, here are some nice photos & stories for you! Patagonia was amazing, I'm so glad I had the chance to go. Lisa & I flew down to Ushuaia, which is the jumping off point for trips to Antarctica! Just 1000km away!
 |
| here is a hostel we stayed at, memorable for snoring men & bedbug bites. ugh! |
 |
| Ushuaia |
 |
| we took a cruise on the beagle channel & here is a little map. i believe the beagle channel was discovered as a route from the pacific to the atlantic by fitz roy & darwin as they explored the region. |
 |
| the harbor is busy! |
 |
| the weather for our boat trip was not the best, weather down here is highly unpredictable |
 |
| we viewed an island with bazillions of terns on it |
 |
| then we viewed these sea lions (lobos del mar) and cormorants |
 |
| a lot of homies were out viewing these guys |
 |
| Lisa is displaying her new style for warmth, hair beard. |
We stopped on an island out in the Beagle Channel for a short hike & cuture/nature talk. It was great and it was freezing.
 |
| my signature Patagonia look. did i mention it's freezing?!?! |
 |
| the vegetation is so cool! |
 |
| adorable steamer ducks, their wings are too short to fly! |
 |
| here our humorous Yagan tour guide is talking about this mounded plant called yarreta, common throughout the Andes & in some places burned as fuel! |
 |
| the crab was dead but it was still cool. |
 |
| as close as i'll get to Antarctica... for now |
 |
| colony of cormorants |
 |
| back to Ushuaia |
And then, Lisa and I embarked on a 4 day trek we had found in the Lonely Planet trekking guide, the Sierra Valdivieso Circuit! It sounded great & was considered the top trek in the area! With a decent map & a route description on Lisa's ipad we set out. Without reading much on current trip reports... I am including this to encourage anyone that finds this information to do some research! It is a challenging and largely unmarked trail through many beaver bogs and rocky alpine areas.
It is about 30 miles round trip.
 |
| here is a nice map of our trekking circuit, better than the one we had! |
 |
| we hitchhiked there & set out, hitting our first bog zone pretty quick |
 |
| and seeing our first beaver damage zone pretty quick. beavers are introduced, exotic species down there with no natural predators and BOY have they wreaked havoc on the landscape |
 |
| these mosses & bog plants were fascinating |
 |
| especially this crazy red bog moss! |
 |
| our first stream crossing, lisa had those nice rubber boots, very convenient |
 |
| here was our first campsite, pretty scenic! |
 |
| yes, that's right, it is windy & we are slowly heating water INSIDE the tent. don't worry, we monitored it. and, unfortunately the flame was so low it took about 1.5 hours to heat water just below a low boil. i wasn't able to find white gas anywhere for my MSR stove (apparently no one uses those anymore) so, we bought this crappy thing and we really got our money's worth. truly crappy. |
 |
| huffing and puffing up our first pass |
 |
| sweet shale type rocks |
 |
| a couple of snow patches to cross |
Oh, and I've been forgetting to mention. There's virtually no trail! In rocky areas there are some cairns to follow but, it's really not easy and you are constantly losing the trail. Also, in some vegetated areas some tiny, faded flags are tied to low bushes. These are nearly impossible to see. My eyes were the sharpest so I was usually leading and scanning ahead for any faint sign of a footprint or marking of any type. As you can imagine, we got sidetracked a lot and spent A LOT of time pulling out the map & the ipad for reference. Also, using the iphone as a compass. Obviously, we made it! But, it was frustrating.
 |
| some of these beaver dams were in deluxe locations. here we saw a couple swimming around, they are huge guys! |
 |
| the beavers choose well |
 |
| beaver damage |
 |
| more beaver damage, they create a lake or pond & the roots of all the trees drown & they die :( |
 |
| sometimes we would find a cairn with an arrow, this one was particularly confusing. |
 |
| after some frustrating routefinding we decided to camp out in this burnt out bog area |
 |
| in the morning we we found our way by locating a huge boulder with a cairn on top of it :) |
 |
| it was pretty magical. i had been waiting anxiously to see a guanaco, native mammal related to a camel |
 |
| guanaco looks like this, it's a cutie! i never saw one on the trek and never even got a photo of one. i did see tons of them from the bus later on in my trip driving through the patagonian steppe, |
 |
| large, helpful cairn and arrow pointing us to a pass |
 |
| another cairn on the pass |
 |
| red bog moss |
 |
| so cool, right?? a cascade of moss |
 |
| islands of moss in the bog |
 |
| when we lost the trail it was a real trudge to walk through the squishy moss. a tough ankle workout |
 |
| on our last couple of days we walked through the bog for ages |
 |
| this was the only flat & solid spot we could find for camping amidst the bog |
 |
| i was careful to not dump into the river getting out of the tent. also, we were kept up all night by a beaver slapping it's tail in the river right next to the tent. |
 |
| all the trees down there are one or another variety of lenga tree, in the beech family |
 |
| this was perhaps the most challenging day of the trek, the last one. we were following strips of masking tape placed intermittently on trees. thank goodness for my eagle eyes |
 |
| masking tape |
 |
| more tape trail. and at some point the tape just stopped. i was really thankful that Lisa is a bit more patient with map & compass than i. she got us out of there & we were happy to finish that trek. overall, despite the "trail" we loved it :) |
 |
| back in Ushuaia |
 |
| Yamana mural |
Interesting sidenote: the native peoples down in Tierra del Fuego, the Yamana or Yagan tribes, were super hardcore! Until westerners tried to convert them to christianity & modernize them (ultimately, killing them all off with diseases) they were living a nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyle using cool canoes from the legna trees and they were always naked! Even in the HARSH climate, and the women spent a lot of time swimming in that fridgid ocean. Wow. The idea was that they were usually coated up with some water insoluble something like whale blubber and then they would throw on a big sea lion fur cloak and warm up by the fire. They even had fires burning all the time out in the canoes when they were fishing. I found it highly interesting.
 |
| sampling the local Beagle brew. and looks like we'll also be having a plate of raw onions. |
The last day down there we visited Tierra del Fuego national park. It was beautiful! We did a nice, coastal trail, it was a real treat to be on a huge, well-marked trail after that trek...
 |
| this is something like the southernmost post office in the world! |
 |
| these fools were feeding a raptor an apple, and he was a fool for eating it |
 |
| lupines are common down there & really pretty |
Phew! That's all for now, buddies. Stay tuned shortly for my trip to Torres del Paine!
xoxo
